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FEBRUARY 1985 VOL. 10, NO. 2 










Today: there are more Apples in 
schools than any other computer. 

Unfortunately, there are still more 
kids in schools than Apples. 

So innocent youngsters (like your 
own) may have to fend off packs of bully 
nerds to get some time on a computer. 

Which is why it makes good sense 
to buy them an Apple" 11c Personal 
Computer of their very own. 

The lie is just like the leading com¬ 
puter in education, the Apple He. Only 
smaller. About the size of a three-ring note¬ 
book, to be exact. 

Even the price of the lie is small — 
under $1300* 


Of course, since the lie is the legiti¬ 
mate offspring of the He, it can access the 
world's largest library of educational soft¬ 
ware. Everything from Stickybear Shapes™ 


for preschoolers to SAT test preparation 
programs tor college hopefuls. 

In fact, the lie can run over 10.000 


programs in all. More than a few of which 
you might be interested in yourself. 

For example, ,3-in-l integrated busi¬ 
ness software. Home accounting and tax 


programs. Diet and fitness programs. 

Not to mention fun programs for the 
whole family. Like "Genetic Mapping' and 



With a He. your kui can do something constructin' after school like leant to urite stones 
Or learn to fly Or even learn something slightly more advanced Like multivariable calculus 









MATH MAZE D«i49nUJo« 


“Enzyme Kinetics.” 

And the Apple lie comes complete 
with everything you need to start computing 
in one box. 

Including a free 4-diskette course to 
teach you how—when your kids get tired 
of your questions. 

An RF modulator that can turn almost 
any TV into a monitor. 

As well as a long list of built-in 
features that would add about $800 to the 
cost of a smaller-minded computer. 

128K of internal memory—twice 



the power of the average office computer. So while your children’s shoe sizes 

A built-in disk drive that would and appetites continue to grow at an 


drive up the price 
of a less-senior 
machine. 

And built- 
in electronics 
for adding 
accessories like 
a printer, a 
modem, an 
AppleMouse or 


In its optional carrying case, the 
i even run 


from 


lie 


alarming rate, there’s 
one thing you know 
can keep up with them. 
Their Apple He. 

To leant more 
about it, visit any 
authorized Apple dealer. 
Or talk to your own 
computer experts.^^ 

As soon 


an extra disk drive when the time comes, as they get nome from school. 


* The FTC is concerned about price fixing. So this is only a Suggested Retail Price. You can pay ’ more if you really want to. © 19&f Affile Computer Inc. typle and the Apple lorn are 
registered trademarks of Apple Computer Inc. Stickybear Shapes is a trademark of Optimum Resource. For an authorized Apple dealer nearest you call ( 800 ) 538 - 9696 . In Canada, call 

( 800 ) 268 7796 or ( 800 ) 268 - 7637 . 



































CONTENTS 




FEATURES 


Introduction .96 

The HP Integral Personal Computer by Phillip Robinson .98 

Hewlett-Packard's new all-in-one system makes UNIX truly portable. 

Garcias Circuit Cellar: Build a Serial EPROM Programmer 

by Steve Ciarcia .104 

Steve devises an affordable version of an essential tool for hackers. 

The Macintosh Office by John Markoff and Phillip Robinson .120 

Appldfalk networks the Macintosh and its new laser printer. 

C to Pascal by Ted Carnevale .138 

This program can make the conversion process less tedious. 

Simulate a Servo System by Don Stauffer .147 

Model complex engineering problems on personal computers. 

Introduction to Image Processing by Jeffrey L. Star .163 

Manipulate images to make them more informative. 


THEMES 


Introduction .174 

The Birth of a Computer conducted by John C. N ash .177 

In this interview. James H. Wilkinson discusses the building 
of a computer designed by Alan Hiring. 

A LowCost Data-Acquisition System 

by K iyohisa Okamura and Kamyab AghaiTabriz .199 

A compromise between cost and quality, this system is adequate for many research projects. 

Fourier Smoothing Without the Fast Fourier Transform 

by Eric E. Aubanel and Keith B. Oldham .207 

The authors present an in-depth look at a technique for removing noise from your data. 

Paranoia: A Floating-Point Benchmark by Richard Karpinski .223 

Tfest the quality of your software, not just its speed. 

Modeling Mass-Action Kinetics by Alan Curtis .239 

In the future, microcomputers may have a substantial role in major scientific computations. 

Viewing Molecules with the Macintosh by Earl J. Kirkland .251 

A BASIC program provides 3-D images of complex molecules. 

Laboratory Interfacing by Lincoln E. Ford, M.D.263 

A medical researcher examines the capabilities and limitations 
of an important laboratory device. 

Interfacing for Data Acquisition by Thomas R. Clune .269 

Three interfaces are compared. 


I 



174 


REVIEWS 


Introduction 286 

Reviewer's Notebook by Glenn Hartwig .289 

NewWord by John Wellborn and Nahci Reel .291 


A word processor from some of the creators of WordStar. 


BYTE (ISSN 0360-5280) is published monthly by McGraw-Hill Inc Founder lames H. McGraw (1860-1948) Executive, editorial, circulation, and advertis¬ 
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in the United States of America. 


2 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


COVER ILLUSTRATION BY ROBERT TINNEY 




































VOLUME 10. NUMBER 2. 1985 


Janus/Ada by M ark J. Welch . 295 

A nonstandard subset of Ada for MS-DOS and CP/M-80. 

The Epson Geneva PX-8 by Rich Malloy . 302 

It weighs five pounds and features a CMOS Z80 microprocessor 

Two Modula-2 Compilers for the IBM PC by Kevin Bowyer .311 

Price is but one of the differences between these implementations. 

E-Mail for the Masses by Wayne Rash Jr.. 317 

Comparing two electronic-mail services. MCI Mail and EasyLink. 

Mannesmann Tally MT 160 by Marie J. Welch . 325 

A dot-matrix unit with a variety of print modes. 

Review Feedback 331 

Readers respond to previous reviews. 


KERNEL 


Introduction 337 

Computing at Chaos Manor: Troubles by lerry P ournelle .339 

Jerry's usual look at a variety of products includes a section 
on the proliferation of computer books. 

Chaos Manor Mail conducted by jerry P ournelle .359 

Jerry's readers write, and he replies. 

BYTE Japan: Disks and Printers by William M. Raike .367 

Our correspondent in Japan describes important new peripherals 
displayed at the 1984 Data Show. 

BYTE West Coast What Next? 

by John Markoff. Phillip Robinson, and Ezra Shapiro .371 

Our West Coast editors report on Thunderscan. 

the ins and outs of windowing, new workstations, and more. 

BYTE U.K.: Realizing a Dream by Dick Fountain .379 

The Whitechapel Computer Works MG-1 personal workstation is 
almost a dream computer—and it costs less than its competitors. 

Computers and Law: Copying Mass-Marketed Software 

by Robert Greene Sterne and Perry J. Saidman .387 

This column debuts with a look at two Lotus lawsuits settled out of court. 

Circuit Cellar Feedback conducted by Steve Ciarcia .393 

Steve answers project-related queries from readers. 


Editorial: Service and Support. 6 

Microbytes. 9 

Letters. 14 

Fixes and Updates. 33 

Whats New. 39. 421 

Ask BYTE. 48 

Clubs & Newsletters. 59 


Book Reviews .65 

Event Queue. 83 

Programming Insight. 399 

Books Received. 409 

Unclassified Ads. 477 

BYTE's Ongoing Monitor Box. 

BOMB Results. 478 

Reader Service. 479 





286 


~ wmmmur 



Address ail editorial correspondence to the Editor. BYTE. POB 372. Hancock. NH 03449 Unacceptable manuscripts will be returned if accompanied 
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in microform from University Microfilms Internatjonal. 300 North Zeeb Rd Dept PR. Ann Arbor. MI 48106 or 18 Bedford Row. Dept PR. 

London WCIR 4 El England 

Subscription questions or problems should be addressed to: BYTE Subscriber Service. POB 328. Hancock. NH 03449 



SECTION ART BY EUGENE MIHAESCO 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 3 









































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BYTE 


EDITOR IN CHIEF 

Philip Lemmons 

MANAGING EDITOR 

Gene Smarte 

CONSULTING EDITORS 

Steve Ciarcia 
Jerry Pournelle 

SENIOR TECHNICAL EDITORS 

G. Michael Vose. Themes 
Gregg Williams 

TECHNICAL EDITORS 

Thomas R Clune 
Jon R. Edwards 
Richard Grehan 
Glenn Hartwig. Reviews 
Richard Krajewski 
Ken Sheldon 
Richard S. Shuford 
Jane Morrill Tazelaar 
Eva White 
Stanley Wszola 

Margaret Cook Gurney. Associate 
Alan Easton, Drafting 

WEST COAST EDITORS 

Ezra Shapiro. Bureau Chief. San Francisco 
John Markoff. Senior Technical Editor. Palo Alto 
Phillip Robinson. Senior Technical Editor. Palo Alto 
Donna Osgood, Associate Editor. San Francisco 
Brenda McLaughlin. Editorial Assistant. S an Francisco 
NEW YORK EDITOR 

Richard Malloy. Senior Technical Editor 

MANAGING editor. 

ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING AND COMMUNICATIONS 

George Bond 

USER NEWS EDITORS 

Anthony J. Lockwood. What's New 
Mark Welch. Microbytes 


CONTRIBUTING EDITORS 

Dennis Allison, at large 

Mark Dahmke. video, operating systems 

Mark Haas, at large 

Rik Jadrnicek. CAD. graphics, spreadsheets 

Mark Klein, communications 

Alan Miller, languages and engineering 

John C. Nash, scientific computing 

Dick Pountain. U K. 

William M. Raike. J apan 
Perry Saidman. computers and law 
Robert Sterne, computers and law 
Bruce Webster, software 


SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT PUBLISHER 

Harry L. Brown 

ASSISTANT PUBLISHER 

Michele P. Verville 

PUBLISHER S ASSISTANT 

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MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS 

Horace T. Howland. Director 
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Len Lorette 

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Donna Sweeney 


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Officers of the Corporation Harold W McGraw |r. Chairman: loseph L. Dionne. President and Chief Executive Officer: Robert N. Landes. Senior 
Vice President and Secretary. Ralph I Webb. Treasurer 














































































































































and our hit 
operations 


UNIX, not for it 

We provide 
megabytes-with en 
running even the me 


modate up to 16 users-all with plen 
But we give you even more. 




100 series, 


bytes. A high speed 50 
megabyte hard disk drive 
is standard on the sys¬ 
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capacity up to 1200 
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can add floating point 




graphics. Video digitizing 
imaging. Communications 




UNIX is a trademark of Bell Laboratories. 

IBM is a trademark of International Business Machines Corp. 


Cromemco’ 


Inquiry 76 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 5 



















EDITORIAL 


Service and Support 

When computers are working they 
keep us entertained, or at least oc¬ 
cupied. That's why happy customers 
seldom praise the retail stores and 
mail-order businesses that sold them 
their computer equipment, and why 
we hear much more criticism of com¬ 
puter dealers. Often retail salespeople 
are decried for knowing little about 
the computers and software they sell 
and mail-order firms for providing less 
customer support than retail stores. 

But the reality varies from store to 
store and transaction to transaction. 

1 have had nothing but good experi¬ 
ences with mail-order companies, in¬ 
cluding free replacement of 100 flop¬ 
py disks when three of ten in the first 
box wouldn't format properly I've 
bought software, a modem, a printer, 
and various supplies through phone 
orders to mail-order businesses. 

My experiences in retail stores have 
been mixed. I once heard a salesman 
tell a customer that Pickles and Trout 
were programming languages (they 
actually were two people who pro¬ 
duced a version of CP/M for the T&ndy 
Model II). On another occasion the 
sales staff of a retail store refused to 
go through the bother of taking an 
order for VisiCalc or to hold a copy 
for me from the next shipment. I went 
back several times only to find Visi¬ 
Calc sold out again and no one will¬ 
ing to take my order. (Finally, I bought 
VisiCalc through mail order and had 
no problems.) On the other hand, the 
retail salespeople at the computer 
store where BYTE made some recent 
purchases not only know what they 
are doing but also give technical sup¬ 
port when things go wrong. 

Street Addresses 

There is room for improvement in 
both mail-order and retail computer 


sales practices. The great concern 
with mail-order businesses is well 
expressed in a letter we received 
from John C. Gunn, director of con¬ 
sumer affairs for Priority One Elec¬ 
tronics of Chatsworth, California: 
"Although we are primarily an in¬ 
dustrial distributor, a measurable por¬ 
tion of our revenue comes from our 
'mail-order' ads. We frequently hear 
horror stories about some poor soul 
who sent his money to a mail drop or 
post office box somewhere. . .and 
never saw any product or a dime of 
his dough. Incidents such as this hurt 
all of us.'' 

Priority One took an interesting 
practical step to counteract this prob¬ 
lem. "To assist in protecting unwitting 
consumers from unscrupulous adver¬ 
tisers,'' Gunn writes, "we lobbied 
strongly for the passage of a bill in¬ 
troduced by California Assemblyman 
Jack O'Connell. This law requires all 
advertisements in our state to carry 
the street address of the company 
placing the advertisement.'' We com¬ 
mend Priority One for its efforts to 
protect the interests of customers of 
mail-order businesses. 

Remote Diagnostics 

The convergence of computer and 
communications technologies offers 
an unprecedented opportunity for im¬ 
proving customer support. When a 
personal computer is connected to 
the telephone system through a 
modem, and if the operating system 
and hardware are still capable of tak¬ 
ing input from the serial port, then 
someone at the other end of the 
telephone line should be able to take 
control of the computer and put it 
through a series of diagnostic tests. 

The availability of such remote 
diagnostics would be a great conve¬ 
nience for computer users, retail 
stores, mail-order businesses, and 


manufacturers. Remote diagnostics 
would be much less expensive than 
shipping costs and would reduce or 
eliminate the problems sometimes 
caused by the consumer's inability to 
describe a problem in a way meaning¬ 
ful to technicians. Instead of lugging 
the machine back to the store or 
packing it up for shipment, the con¬ 
sumer could just connect the com¬ 
puter to the telephone and watch the 
diagnostics at work. In many in¬ 
stances, the consumer could learn 
what was wrong and how much it 
might cost to fix before sending out 
the equipment. The service or¬ 
ganization would know what type of 
repair was coming and be prepared 
to fix it. In some cases the machine 
wouldn't have to be sent out at all: 
there could be a software fix or a 
board swap. 

Some companies already furnish 
diagnostic disks. These disks are valu¬ 
able, but because of a lack of infor¬ 
mation needed to interpret the results 
of the tests, they tend to leave the 
customer poorly informed. Remote 
diagnostics would permit the service 
organization to use additional tests to 
identify the problem more precisely 
and then to tell the customer more 
about the extent of the repairs and 
potential costs. 

Since repair bills can range from 
$75 to more than $1000, mystery 
breeds distrust. Consumers often 
express suspicion about repair costs 
of the automobile and other famil¬ 
iar machines. Similar feelings of 
distrust about repairs of computer 
equipment could become much more 
pervasive. Remote diagnostics could 
reduce mystery and improve con¬ 
sumer confidence in the computer in¬ 
dustry. We hope the use of remote 
diagnostics becomes standard in¬ 
dustry practice. 

—Phil Lemmons, Editor in Chief 


6 BYT E • FEBRUARY 1985 







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FLOPPY DISK 



Maxell Gold. 

The floppy disk 
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golden, 

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your argument, there’s a Maxell floppy disk 
perfect for your computer. Consider the 
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particles for quality over the long run. Or 
our lifetime warranty. Maxell. The Gold 
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Inquiry 201 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 7 












Wordstar Wordprocessing and SuperCalc3 Integrated Spreadsheet now included Free with all Seequa computers. 


SEEQUA 
SHOWS YOU 
HOWTO 
GET AN 
IBM PC 
FOR JUST 

81595 . 

BUY A CHAMELEON 
BY8EE0UA 


The Chameleon by Seequa does everything an 
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an 8 bit micro¬ 
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the best programs around, Perfect Writer™ and 
Perfect Calc.™ It’s portable. And you can plug it in 
and start computing the moment you unwrap it. 

So if you’ve been inter¬ 
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they sell Chameleons. 


COMPUTER 

CORPORATION 

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Chameleon shown with optional second disk drive. 

To learn more about Seequa or for the location of the Seequa dealer 
nearest you. call (800) 638-6066 or (301) 672-3600. 

IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation. 


8 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 277 







MICROBYTES 


Staff-written highlights of late developments in the microcomputer industry. 


CP/M for the Macintosh 

IQ Software, Fort Worth, TX, is selling a version of CP/M-68K for Apple's 128K-byte Macin¬ 
tosh for $395, including Digital Research's C Compiler and Macro Assembler. CP/M 2.2 
emulation is available for $195 extra but runs only on a 512K-byte Macintosh. A 512K-byte 
Macintosh is also required to access the mouse and pull-down menus. CP/M-68K disks are 
not compatible with other Macintosh disks. 

Superex, Micromax Unveil Macintosh Business Software 

Superex Business Software, Yonkers, NY, announced 25 new products for the Macintosh, 
priced from $20 to $800. The least expensive item is also the only hardware product in¬ 
troduced: MacSpeak is a $19.95 external speaker. All products should be available this 
month. 

Also included are business programs for cost estimating, time billing, inventory, finance, 
business letters, sales, and wholesaling. A complete accounting package with Accounts 
Payable and Receivable and General Ledger modules is $750. A Home Executive program is 
$90. 

Four engineering packages—for civil, mechanical, chemical, or electrical engineers—are 
$100 each. A MacScience series includes Physics or Chemistry formulas for $100 each. 

Statistics and job-hunting programs were also announced. 

Micromax, San Diego, CA, introduced Gallery, a business-accounting software series. The 
Finance module, which includes General Ledger, Accounts Payable and Receivable, and Cash 
Disbursement, is $795; industry-specific vertical applications are also planned. 

Conetic Introduces Desktop Management Software 

Conetic Systems Inc., San Leandro, CA, introduced Higgins, a specialized relational database 
program for the IBM PC XT or PC AT that includes an appointment calendar, telephone/ad¬ 
dress file, expense report, and message features. Information entered into the program is 
linked to related files; for example, the telephone directory is checked when an appoint¬ 
ment is made. Information for up to seven people can be tracked on one computer. A local- 
area-network version that exchanges nonprivate schedule information is also available. The 
single-user version of Higgins is $395. 

Lantech Offers UNIX-like Operating System for $129 

Lantech Systems Inc., Dallas, TX, announced uNETix 2.0, a multitasking operating system for 
the IBM PC that it says is compatible with AT&T's UNIX operating system but costs just 
$129. Using optional $100 window-management software, PC users can execute up to 10 ap¬ 
plications concurrently; one of those could be a PC-DOS application running under 
Lantech's $50 PC Emulator. 

While a hard disk is recommended, Lantech says the operating system can run on a two- 
disk system. A separate version of uNETix is available for use in local-area networks. 

Smalltalk for PCs 

Digitalk, Los Angeles, CA, introduced Methods, a Smalltalk-80 object-oriented development 
system for the IBM PC. The $250 system includes a compiler, debugger, and text editor; it 
uses a text-based windowing system with pop-up menus. Methods requires an IBM PC with 
512K bytes of RAM and two 360K-byte disk drives. 

Software Systems, San Francisco, CA, is also developing a Smalltalk for the Apple II, with 
later versions planned for 8088- and 68000-based systems. 

( continued ) 

FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 9 











MICROBYTES 


Software Teledelivery Efforts Falter 

At last year’s Winter Consumer Electronics Show, several companies announced or dis¬ 
cussed plans for electronic delivery of software. Some, including Xante, Romox, and Cumma 
Technology, planned to download to erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM) 
cartridges at dealer terminals. Others, including Control Video’s GameLine and the Nabu 
Network’s cable service, downloaded programs directly to computers or video games. 

Xante, Romox, and Cumma have all ceased operations, mainly because of poor dealer 
response and the general collapse of the cartridge video-game market. Nabu's cable-TV- 
based software-downloading service continues to operate in Ottawa, Ontario, despite finan¬ 
cial troubles. Control Video Corp., Vienna, VA, said poor distribution and the general video- 
game slump led it to cancel its GameLine service for the Atari 2600 VCS. 

Control Video is now testing a new service which allows subscribers to play 20 games 
available each month as often as they wish for a $14.95 monthly fee, which includes rental 
of a 2000-bps modem from BellSouth. MasterLine is now available for Apple II and Com¬ 
modore 64 owners in Atlanta, Los Angeles. Houston, and Washington, DC. 

Separately, NBC announced that it would cancel the NBC Teletext service in late January. 


NANOBYTES 

Intel introduced the 82588 single-chip local-area-network controller. The 82588 can be used 
in low-cost baseband or broadband networks— including such IEEE 802.3 protocols as IBM’s 
PC Network and the developing STARLAN— at speeds up to 2 megabits per second. Initial 
pricing will be $45 each in large quantities. . . . Laserstore, Princeton, NJ, plans to sell a 
2.5-gigabyte write-once optical streaming-tape drive. The drives should be available in large 
quantities in mid-1986 for about $2500. . . . Multi Solutions announced a licensing agree¬ 
ment with Computer Engineering & Consulting of Tokyo, under which CEC will translate 
Multi Solutions’ SI operating system for Japanese computers. Currently, SI runs on several 
68000-based computers and is being translated by MSI for the IBM PC AT. The agreement 
guarantees a minimum of $40 million in royalties, according to Multi Solutions. . . . WATCOM 
Products Inc. has released two products developed at the University of Waterloo in 
Canada. WATFILE is a $295 data-management system for the IBM PC; JANET/2 is network¬ 
ing software for IBM's PC Cluster system. . . . Alphacom announced a 133-character-per- 
second printer at $249 that it says is compatible with Epson’s RX-80. . . . Corvus and NEC 
have agreed to jointly develop a single-chip controller for Corvus's Omninet local-area net¬ 
work. Currently, an Omninet controller requires three chips developed by Corvus. . . . Ad¬ 
vanced Micro Devices now offers a 10-MHz version of the 80186 processor. . . . Phoenix 
Software, Norwood, MA. has developed an IBM PC XT-compatible ROM BIOS and is 
developing software compatible with IBM's PC AT. Phoenix’s earlier IBM PC-compatible 
ROM BIOS code has already been licensed by AT&T, Kaypro, Tandy/Radio Shack, Wyse 
Technology, and Zaisan. . . . Rumors that TEindy would begin selling ACT computers in its 
Radio Shack stores are apparently false. Instead, the two companies announced a joint ven¬ 
ture to operate a chain of computer stores in Europe, called TA ComputerWorld. The stores 
will sell both Tandy and ACT computer products. . . . AST Research announced RamStak, a 
memory-expansion board for the Apple Lisa computer. The board can add up to 2 
megabytes of memory to the Lisa; with 512K bytes, it’s priced at $1395. . . . Mosaic Elec¬ 
tronics, Oregon City, OR. announced Access-M, an expansion card for the Commodore 64 
adding up to 1 megabyte of memory. The standard $195 card includes 64K bytes of RAM 
and RAM-disk software; additional memory is plugged into the card. . . . PortaAPL, a $275 
APL interpreter for the Macintosh, was introduced by Portable Software, Cambridge, MA. 
PortaAPL adds a full-screen editor and access to many Macintosh ROM toolbox routines to 
the standard APL language but requires a 512K-byte Macintosh. . . . C Line Inc., Chicago, IL, 
announced a dBASE II-to-cEnglish converter. The $795 program converts standard dBASE II 
source code into cEnglish, which is then translated by the $900 cEnglish program into C, 
which is in turn compiled into machine language by a C compiler. 


10 B Y T E • FEBRUARY 1985 








TheTI855is 
the only printer 
with letter quality, 
draft speed, 
graphics, 
plug'in font 
modules..* 
all for under 
$ 1000 . 


Finally, the printer for all PC needs. 



The TI855 printer. The 
printer for all major PC’s. 
See for yourself today. 

Call 1-800-527-3500 

for the dealer 


Texas ^ 
Instruments 

Creating useful products 
and services for you. 


DPF012BY 

This printout was not generated by the Tl 855. 2764-08 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 11 


































Slide Cat from kodak introduces: 



THE CAT-QUICK 
SLIDE-MAKERS 
THAT WILL 






©EASTMAN KODAK COMPANY, 1984 






Turn CRT Data 
Into A Slide, Cat-Quick. 


“Now you can make presentation- 
quality instant slides from CRT 
screens, one at a time. Slides that 
integrate beautifully into the rest 
of your show. It's like having your 
own instant slide department. And 
you don’t have to be an audio¬ 
visual professional to do it. 

“Kodak's new cat- 
quick slide-makers are 
a versatile group of 


INS1A GRAPHIC 
Copy Stand 

Use this well-designed unit to make slides ^ 
pictures, printed material, and artwork up to 
II" x 17". Or small, three dimensional objects. 
Right in your office. In ordinary room light. 


state-of-the-art products designed 
to convert computer-generated 
material into slides, fast! 

“With our new imager, you can 
make instant slides (or prints) 
from just about any data that 
appears on your CRT screen...pie 
charts, bar charts, organization 
charts, etc. And you can use just 
about any size terminal—9-, 12-, 
13-, even 19-inch screens. Direct 


KODAK 

INSTAGRAPHIC 
CRT Slide Imager 

Contains KODAK 
INSTAGRAPHIC 
Camera Back, KODAK 
INSTAGRAPHIC Slide 
Module, and KODAK 
INSTAGRAPHIC CRT 
Cone. Just add the 
appropriate CRT 
adapter to make 
instant presentation 
quality slides that 
integrate beautifully 
into the rest of your 
show. There ’s even an 
optional module that lets you make prints. 

conversion from CRT to 
slide can save you time, 
and money! For slides 
from hard copy use our 
sleek copy 

stand. Both methods 
are easy and affordable. 
Your options are many. You 
in buy one product, or the entire 
Make a single slide or 
entire presentation. Prove 
point, or wow an audience, 
use our camera back, module, 
and film to photograph images 
electronically transferred with 
many manufacturers’ video image 
recorders! And get results that 
make a grin begin. 


Kodak 

Instagraphic' 
color film _ . , 

Print 


KODAK CRT Adapters 

Make an instant slide or print 
from your screen, any screen — 

9-, 12-, I3-, even 19-inch—with your 
choice of adapter to fit between the imager and 
the CRT screen. 


KODAK INSTAGRAPHIC 
Slide Mounter and Mounts 

Last step. Mount your slide quickly and 
easily with this simple-to-use device. 
Eases film into the slide mount auto¬ 
matically so you never have to snap the 
mount together or touch the image area. 


Kodak 

Instaqraphic’ 

ID 

color film 

Side 



saraaaas. rrr-* 1 

. r -. T 



To learn more 
these new 
siaie-oi-the-art 
products, call 1800 44KODAK, 
Ext 233 (1 800 445 6325, 

Ext 233), or use the coupon below. 
Or contact your local dealer in 
Kodak audiovisual products, listed 
in the Yellow Pages under ‘AV 
equipment and supplies.’ ” 


New cat-quick slide-makers 
from Kodak. 

THEY’RE GONNA 
MAKE YOU GRIN, 


Eastman Kodak Company, Dept 412 L 
Motion Picture and Audiovisual Markets Division 
Rochester, NY 14650 

□ Please have a representative call me. A8071 

□ Please send me your informative Slide Cat brochure. A8072 


KODAK INSTAGRAPHIC Color Slide Film 

Shoot just one slide or an entire presentation. One- 
at a-time exposure means you waste no film, waste 
no money. If you need instant color prints of CRT 
displays,' use KODAK INSTAGRAPHIC Color Print 
Film and substitute the KODAK INSTAGRAPHIC 
Print Module. 


Inquiry 345 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 13 






















LETTERS 


CP/M Plus for the Model 4 


Editor's note: I n the following sequence of letters, 
reader William F. Crowell addresses Tandy Cor¬ 
poration Chairman John Roach. BYTE (having 
received a copy of Crowell's letter ) responds to 
Crowell, and David Krebbs of Tandy replies to 
Crowell. 

Dear Mr. Roach, 

I am a longtime computer customer of 
T^ndy Corporation. I presently own two 
Model Is, a Model 4. and a Model 4P. For 
over 18 months now, since it was first an¬ 
nounced. 1 have been waiting to receive 
a working version of Model 4 CP/M Plus. 

First, I had to wait 13 months after Tkndy 
announced the product before it was even 
released. (However, this didn't stop Tkndy 
from advertising the product as available 
during this entire period of time, presum¬ 
ably to sell more Model 4s to customers 
who want to run CP/M Plus.) I immediate¬ 
ly bought a copy. As you know, however, 
the original release was full of bugs. 

I volunteered to beta-test the new 
preliminary version 1.1. which I did. I im¬ 
mediately discovered that random access 
failed miserably. Then I observed from the 
source code. RANDOM.ASM. that virtual¬ 
ly nothing had been done to implement ran¬ 
dom access on the Model 4 hardware en¬ 
vironment. 

'fandy calls this an operating system? 
How could the company even release it 
in the first place without random access? 
Also, the BIOS is supposed to emulate a 
DEC VT-52 terminal, but it doesn't. Many 
of the VT-52 control codes don't work. Fur¬ 
ther. the promised CBASIC has never been 
released, and there is no release date that 
I am aware of. 

How is it that T^ndy is able to release 
so much other TRS-DOS software, but it 
takes over 17 months now to merely write 
a correct BIOS for CP/M Plus? This rather 
obviously represents a violation of the 
antitrust laws. 

Why haven't the popular magazines 
reported this irresponsible and reprehen¬ 
sible conduct by Tkndy? Are they afraid 
of losing your advertising? 

You are hereby placed on notice that I 
will attempt to file a class-action suit 
against T^ndy Corporation for consumer 


fraud, breach of contract, antitrust, and 
possibly other causes of action unless 
working versions of CP/M Plus and CBASIC 
are available for purchase and the work¬ 
ing version of CP/M Plus is provided to 
purchasers of the original version within 
30 days of this date. 

I am sorry to take such an unfriendly 
tone in this letter, but apparently threats 
of legal action are the only thing that 
T^ndy understands. 

William F. Crowell 
Attorney 
Oakland. CA 

BYTE replies: 

We called Mark Yamagata of Tandy re¬ 
garding CP/M Plus for the Model 4. Mr 
Yamagata quickly admitted that there 
were bugs in the product. He added that 
the new version was almost ready but 
that one more bug had to be worked out. 
He said the new version would be avail¬ 
able by the end of October. He also said 
that all registered users would be advised 
of the new version, which will be avail¬ 
able to them at no charge. We hope the 
new version solves the problems you ve 
encountered with CP/M Plus: if not. or if 
Tandy fails to ship the new version. 
please let us know so we can report on it. 

As to magazine policies on publishing 
letters to the editor ; we receive far more 
letters than we can publish. We try to 
choose those of greatest interest to the 
greatest number of readers. When we 
receive copies of complaints like yours, 
we generally call the company involved 
and try to obtain information about how 
the problem can be solved. If a solution 
appears imminent, we call the author of 
the letter and inform him or her. By the 
time we could publish the letter, the 
reason for the complaint will have dis¬ 
appeared. 

In this case, the solution appears to 
have been imminent’’ for a long time. 
We hope that CP/M Plus is now fully func¬ 
tional on the Model 4. 

Tandy replies: 

Dear Mr. Crowell. 

I regret your problems with Model 4 
CP/M Plus, but I can do no more than to 


repeat some of the points that I men¬ 
tioned during our previous telephone 
conversations. You are correct in observ¬ 
ing that Model 4 CP/M Plus got onto the 
market later than we originally intended 
and that the initial release had bugs. This, 
as you know, is not at all unusual with 
software. Virtually all software packages 
do contain bugs when they are first 
released, and these bugs are subse¬ 
quently removed as later versions of the 
software packages come into the market. 

From your letter I infer that you do not 
regard the version of Model 4 CP/M Plus 
that we are now selling as a "working ver¬ 
sion.' ' / must respectfully disagree. It is 
the position of Tandy Corporation that 
our Model 4 CP/M Plus software package 
is quite adequate for the purposes for 
which it is intended, and retail sales to 
date, as well as user feedback, indicate 
that the public agrees with us. I am sorry 
if this particular software package is not 
suitable to you in some way or ways, but 
you will understand. I trust, that it is not 
possible for us to design our products so 
that they are perfectly acceptable in 
every respect to every single member of 
the buying public. 

Regarding your comments on the 
VT-52. please note that the first release 
of the Model 4 CP/M Plus manual did 
contain errors on the decimal values 
assigned to the VT-52 emulation codes. 
The correct codes have been sent to you 
by Mr. James Brown, of this office, and 
a Publication Change Notice has been 
submitted for future editions of the 
manual. You will find that the VT-52 con¬ 
trol codes will work correctly with the in¬ 
formation that Mr. Brown sent to you. 

( continued ) 


LETTERS POLICY: To be considered for pub¬ 
lication. a letter must be typed double-spaced on 
one side of the paper and must include your name 
and address. Comments and ideas should be ex¬ 
pressed as clearly and concisely as possible. 
Listings and tables may be printed along with 
a letter if they are short and legible. 

Because BYTE receives hundreds of letters each 
month, not all of them can be published. Letters 
will not be returned to authors. Generally, it tabes 
four months from the time BYTE receives a let¬ 
ter until it is published. 


14 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 








Portable 


Backup! 




‘IBM is a trademark of 
International Business 
Machines. Compaq is a 
trademark of Compaq 
Computer Corpora¬ 
tion. NCR is a trade¬ 
mark of NCR 
Corporation. 


Inquiry 202 


Back Up All the Hard Drives in Your Office. 

The MaynStream offers fully portable hard drive backup 
employing the latest software technology. It is compatible with 
IBM, Compaq, and NCR personal computers* and comes with 
an industry-leading 1-year warranty. 


O ' Maynard Electronics 

430 E. SEMORAN BLVD., CASSELBERRY, FL 32707 

305 / 331-6402 


TAPE BACKUP SYSTEM 
BY MAYNARD ELECTRONICS 



















A New Tool For 

■ /i 1—— r / III I i "— /_ 

Real Estate Prol 


Real Estate Investment has become a complex and sophisti¬ 
cated challenge. Today's investor is faced with an ever-increasing 
difficulty in forecasting expenses and value, and a bewildering array 
of financing options and tax laws. 

Now, R*E*A*P™ gives you a powerful analytical tool for making 
rapid and informed decisions on the income potential and liquida¬ 
tion value of a property 

Although written by financial professionals to the 


e)pctiijig~ 

specifications of the sophisticated investor, R*E*A*P” remains easy 
to use by anyone buying or selling property 

R*E*A*P , “ forecasts expense, loan, tax, and depreciation data, 
enabling you to build a comprehensive financial model of any real 
estate investment. 


Some Special Features: 

• Allows all data categories to be altered and recalculated 
I for true "what if" analysis. r t~~j — f-— L I I / T 

Saves data for future analysis or manipulation. 

I • Automatically adjusts for calendar year. [ r —f - 1 I I 

«* Forecasts expenses by 3 user selected methods. 

Printed Reports: 

• Adjusted tax basis 

• Capital gain at sale 

• Sales proceeds, after taxes 


• Income and expen: 


SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY PRICE $ 149 


R*B*A*F“ is available for: IBM-PC/XT* and 
COMBMIBLES (including 80)86 micro¬ 
processor), APPLE III*. APPLE II* and lie*. 
Requires I28K of RAM and 2 disk drives. 


MANUAL ONLY: $15 PLUS SHIPPING 
Mass, residents add 5% sales tax. 

10 DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE 
VISA OR MASTERCARD 


TOLL-FREE ORDER LINE 1 • 800 ■ 637 ■ 0012 


Call or write today! 


124 St. Mary's S 
Boston, MA 02; 
(617) 267-3592 


ANALYSIS SOFTWARE 


rr** .. 


Tr^- 

L 

7—- 

j 

f—— 

pi m 

q 

1 

L 




letters 




we 


CP/ » flte 

that the catff y ° u as w eU. bv th 

UibZ St ° resata retoi ' SnOWavail able 

uccupJZ'^'"^ , SS‘ Ski0n « 

that we shall a £ business and / a ^ 


Pirate 


Confesses 


Dav,d Krebbs 

Cuc^ ~'' m Puter 
Corner Services 


Radio Shack r EBI 

c,l f ^ k Com P»t< 


r~~l - i - l-i! I / sDen? derstand that the 

■Trademarks of Microsoft and Apple Computer p / rron ^ - 


pi 5 detTi, Z&ZZZZZ 

StsSsri 

ien'fT Shonof >Zi"S 0, ”f>»are 
io?ou“i y 01 p "®»e ’ l»» 

one reason i r ^f, package or two 


' on one 




is con- 


FEBRUARY 1 985 


ages; 

T ^e'sar PUter 

us t s,ze 

demonstration disk k d ° rs k do in fact offer 


Inquiry 55 


( continued ) 



















What every Apple owner 
should know about 


WORD 

juggler: 



There's nothing to memorize, either. Because Word 
Juggler comes with replacement keycaps—and a special 
keyboard template—which identify principal editing and 
formatting commands. So you can focus your efforts on 
using the program, not learning it. 


Quark 


2525 West Evans, Suite 220 
Denver CO 80219 


Inquiry 264 


Quark and Word Juggler are trademarks of Quark Incorporated. Apple is a 
registered trademark of Apple Computer, Inc. 

Ask about our specially-priced educational version. 


Fact is, no other word processor for your Apple lie or 
lie gives you this unique combination of power, functionality 
and ease of use. And if all these advantages aren’t compelling 
enough, check the price. Suggested retail is only $189. 


So visit your favorite dealer today. Ask for a complete 
demonstration—and for a copy of our brochure, “What 
Every Apple Owner Should Know About Word Juggler." If 
you don't have a favorite dealer, but would like one, just call 
1 (800) 543-7711. We’ll fix you up. 


If you own an Apple lie or 11c—or you’re planning to 
buy one—here are a few things you should know about 
Quark’s Word Juggler word processor. 

First of all, Word Juggler is the only word processor that 
gives you a powerful spelling checker and a built-in telecom¬ 
munications feature. So you can create a document—check 
it for spelling errors—and then send it via electronic mail. All 
with just one program. 

Plus, Word Juggler is the most easy-to-use, professional 
word processor you can buy for your Apple. Virtually every 
function—even complicated “cut-and-paste" tasks—can be 
accomplished with a single keystroke. 


Copyright 1985. Quark Incorporated 


Photography by Barbara Kasten 









LETTERS 


FINALLY! MAIL ORDER SERVICE YOU CAN DEPEND ON! 



BUSINESS SOFTWARE 


PROFESSIONAL SUPPORT PLUS RELIABLE PERSONALIZED SERVICE 

AND WE LL STILL BEAT MOST PRICES IN THIS MAGAZINE! 


WORDSTAR 


SYMPHONY 

SIDEKICK 

MULTIMATE 

TURBO 


LOTUS 

PR0PAK 



(C.P.) 


PASCAL 


1-2-3 






(C.P.) 



$243 


$409 

$39 

$253 

$39 


$295 


AIO 

Typequick 85 85 


ALPHA SOFTWARE 

Data Base Manager 

295 

179 

AN0ERS0N-BELL 

Abstat 

395 

267 

ASHTONTATE 

D Base II 


265 

D Base III 


363 

Framework 


363 

Friday 


169 

ATI 

Training Word Star 

75 

45 

Training dBase II 

75 

45 

BORLAND INTERNATIONAL 

Toolbox 

49 

40 

CDEX 

Advanced Lotus 1-2-3 

70 

45 

CHANG LABS 

Rags to Riches Ledger 

99 

79 

CONDOR 

Condor 3 

650 

249 

CONTINENTAL SOFTWARE 

Home Accountant Plus 

150 

99 

DIGITAL MARKETING 

Writers Pak 

295 

199 

Footnote 

99 

84 

Datebook II 

295 

179 

Notebook 

150 

98 

Proofreader 

50 

38 

Grammatik 

75 

65 

ENERTR0NICS 

Energraphics W/Plot Opt 

450 

297 

FOX & GELLER 

DGraph or Quickcode 

295 

159 

dUtil 

99 

58 

FOX RESEARCH 

10 Base 

495 

399 

FUNK 

Sideways 

60 

45 


HARVARD SOFTWARE 


Harvard Project Mgr 

HERITAGE 

395 

240 

Smart Key 

IUS 

90 

65 

Easy System II 

395 

184 

General Ledger 

595 

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Accounts Payable 

LEXIS0FT 

595 

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Spellbinder 

LIFETREE 

495 

239 

Volkswriter Deluxe 

LIVING VIDEO TEXT INC. 

295 

158 

Think Tank (IBM) 

195 

149 

Think Tank (Mac) 

MOBS 

150 

109 

Knowledgeman 

MECA 

500 

299 

Managing Your Money 

MICROPRO 

199 

135 

WordStar 

350 

195 

SpellStar 

99 

79 

CorrectStar 

145 

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MailMerge 

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InfoStar 

495 

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WordStar 2000 


CALL 

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R Base 4000 

495 

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Extended Report Writer 

MICROSOFT 

150 

119 

Multiplan 

250 

139 

Word/Mouse 

475 

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Chart (Mac) 

125 

99 

Cash Plan (IBM) 

MICROSTUFF 

150 

50 

Crosstalk 

195 

98 


MONOGRAM 


Dollars and Sense (IBM) 

179 

149 

Dollars and Sense (Mac) 

OASIS 

149 

119 

Word Plus 

150 

105 

Punctuation and Style 

PACIFIC DATA SYSTEMS 

150 

95 

Money Track 

PEACHTREE 

295 

219 

Peachtext 5000 

425 

185 

CalendarManagement 

195 

165 

Decision Manager 

625 

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Business Graphics System 

295 

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Peachpak 4 

PETER NORTON 

395 

199 

Norton Utilities 

PRENTICE-HALL 

100 

65 

Execuvision 

395 

299 

SELECT INFORMATION SYSTEMS 


Select Word Processor 

S0RCIM 

295 

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SuperCalc 2 

295 

154 

SuperCalc 3 

395 

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TYL0G 

695 

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dBase Window 

WARNER SOFTWARE INC. 

249 

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The Desk Organizer 

WOOLF SYSTEMS 

195 

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Move It 

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all sales final. _ 


(800) 235-3020 (USA) 
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NOVATO, CA 94947_ 


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determine if they will satisfy your needs. 
I try to study a product as much as I can 
from reviews in the trade publications. I 
then select one or two similar packages 
and attempt to find people who are using 
them. 1 obtain a copy (or the original) and 
the product's documentation, and I try the 
package out for a month or so. If I like the 
product, I then purchase a "legitimate" 
version of it, or else I erase my copy or 
return it to the lender. In this respect I am 
probably more ethical than most in that 
I will buy a legitimate copy of any software 
that I intend to use on my machine for any 
length of time after I have already ob¬ 
tained a pirated version of it. 

I seek only to protect my investment, 
and I will discontinue this practice when 
I can obtain a full-function demonstration 
disk of a package that I intend to purchase. 
I somehow expect that quite a number of 
software vendors would be opposed to a 
30-day trial arrangement because their 
products wouldn't stand up to head-to- 
head competition. 

Name and address withheld 

No Support from Apple 


I would like to confirm the lack of available 
Apple documentation noted in Dennis 
Doms's letter ("A Call for Better Apple Sup¬ 
port." September 1984, page 14). 

After purchasing an Apple lie in May to 
complement my lie while I was traveling, 

I was immediately confronted with a lack 
of technical details needed to connect my 
"non-Apple" peripherals to the lie. What 
are the pin connections on the serial 
ports? What are the memory locations 
that control baud rate, characters per line. 
ACIA status, etc? 

Since I travel extensively I thought I 
could pick up the Apple II c Reference Manual 
in one of the many authorized Apple 
dealers I visit when out of town. After 
visiting over 30 stores in New York. New 
Jersey, southern California, and Oregon, 

I have been unable to find the reference 
manual. 

I hope that letters like Dennis's and mine 
will stir Apple into getting the publications 
into the hands of the thousands of Apple 
users who want to know all there is to 
know about one of the most revolutionary 
products of our times. 

George W. Ziegler, Jr. 

Mahwah. NJ 

I read with interest Dennis Doms's letter 
describing his problems obtaining Apple 
documentation. 

( continued ) 


18 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 110 







































And you thought there was only 
one "Graphics Card'/ 




AST introduces Preview! for $100 Less 


Now you have a choice for bit¬ 
mapped graphics. Priced at $399— 
$100 less than what you'd expect 
—AST's Preview! brings high resolu¬ 
tion bit-mapped graphics and clear, 
crisp text to your IBM® PC, XT or AT 
monochrome screen. And there's 
no standard like AST quality. 

Preview! provides all the features 
and functions you'd expect, like 
bit-map addressing the maximum 
supported 720 horizontal pixels 
by 348 vertical lines for two pages of 
full-screen high resolution graphics, 
an IBM PC-compatible parallel printer 
port and Hercules™ bit-mapped 
graphics card compatibility. 

It works with all kinds of soft¬ 
ware too, no other card offers more. 
New generation integrated business 
programs, bit-mapped text process¬ 
ing and advanced windowing appli¬ 
cations are specialties. 

Then there's the nonstandard fea¬ 
tures AST is famous for—consistent 
quality, reliability, comprehen¬ 
sive documentation, service, support 
and extra value. We include our 


SYMPHONY 


WORD 


FRAMEWORK 


\ i x m \ % \ \ m 

WaVxW 

\ V- \*>\ Xt. S ;,V 

\ \ ' ’ '“V* ; v 

\ MetaWINDOW 1 

. ♦, v c, 

•> ■:* -J 


SuperPak™ RAM disk simu 
lator and printer spooler 
utility diskette. Judged by PC 
WORLD readers as a World 
Class Winner for the past two 
years, it's worth $45 by itself. 

The leadership strength that 
makes our consistent quality so 
affordable is carried throughout 
our complete line of PC enhance¬ 
ment products. We offer a family of 
graphics products which provide 
a variety of features from serial ports 
to expansion memory, as well as 
multifunction boards, micro-to- 
mainframe communications, local 
area networks and disk subsystems. 

So you can settle for the com¬ 
mon, ordinary graphics card and 
hope for the best. Or you can pay 
$100 less and know you have the 
best—Preview! only from AST. For 
more information and dealer loca¬ 
tions call our Customer Information 
Center (714) 863-1333, Ext. 5249. 

Or write, AST Research, Inc., 2121 
Alton Avenue, Irvine, CA 92714 
TWX: 753699AST UR. 


FEATURES 


• 64K Screen Memory 

• 7 Ivo Pages of High 
Resolution 720 Hori¬ 
zontal PELS by 348 
Vertical Line Bit- 
Mapped Monochrome 
Graphics 

• 80 Character By 
25 Line IBM PC- 
Compatible 7 ixt 
Display 


• Standard IBM Charac¬ 
ter Set 

• Compatible With 
Popular Bit-Mapped 
Graphics, Text and 
Windowing Applica¬ 
tions Software 

• Parallel Printer Port 
» SuperPak Utility 

Diskette 

• Hercules Compatible 


Preview! and SuperPak trademarks of AST Research. 
Inc. IBM trademark of International Business Ma¬ 
chines Corp. Hercules Graphics Card trademark of 
Hercules Computer "technology. Lotus 1-2-3 and 
Symphony trademarks of Lotus Development Corp. 
Framework trademark of AshtonTate. Word trade 
mark of Microsoft. Inc. MetaWINDOW trademark 
of Metagraphis 

Inquiry 5 for Dealers. 

Inquiry 6 for End-Users. 


RCSCRRCH INC. 












Available for the IBM PC, AT, XT, jr.,* and true compatibles 

CLEAR THE DESK, 

SIDEKICK’S 


HERE! The Super 

ALWAYS JUST A KEYSTROKE AWAY ... 

No matter what software you’re running! 

WHETHER YOU’RE RUNNING LOTUS, WORDSTAR, 
dRASE OR WHATEVER ... 

JUST A KEYSTROKE AND A SIDEKICK WINDOW OPENS 
•A CALCULATOR * AN APPOINTMENT CALENDAR 






11:39:23 9/14/1984 
Cost of Materials $28.69 
Rent $5.88 

Advertising $45.08 

Salaries $35.08 


:8 

help #-save sfehnew file '^i-iwport data iftPexpand iFTcontract 


$5 495 

opy-protected 

$8495 

noncopv-protected 


30 DAY 
MONEY BACK 
GUARANTEE 


Here’s Sidekick in action. That’s Lotus 1-2-3 running under¬ 
neath. In the Sidekick Notepad you can see data that’s been 
imported from the Lotus screen. On the upper right, that’s the 
Sidekick Calculator. 






NOW . . . Whether you’re working in dBase, Lotus, Wordstar or 
whatever ... you can unleash the full power of your computer ... and 
make a lot of extra space on your desk at the same time. 

Whenever you’re using your computer. . . from start to finish 
of your session . . . Sidekick™ will be there . . . ready to serve. And it’s 
as lightning-fast and compact as only Borland knows how to make it. 

There’s a notepad that has a full-screen editor that can time and 
date stamp your notes, and then save them to disk. You can even pull 
information into the notepad directly from the screen of your “underlying” 
software. 

Suppose you’re working in Lotus and the phone suddenly rings. 

Give your Sidekick a call and it pops right up over Lotus with the notepad 
you need. Or an appointment calendar... one you can never misplace. 

What if you need to do a quick calculation? A keystroke instantly 
brings up the calculator. And the results of your calculations can even be 
transferred to your “underlying” software. 

Need to make a phone call? Up pops your personal phone directory. 
Type in the name you want... and Sidekick jumps right to the phone 
number. Another keystroke, and the phone is automatically dialed for you. f 

There’s lots more, too. You can move the Sidekick windows 
anywhere on the screen you like. And you can have as many on screen at 
a time as you need. There’s even an on-line help window for each of 
Sidekick’s features. 

We designed it because we needed it If you’ve ever been writing 
a report and needed to do a quick calculation, or jot down a note, then 
you need Sidekick, too. 


fOnly with Hayes Smartmodem and compatibles 


GOT YOUR SIDEKICK YET? 

SIDEKICK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR NEAREST SOFTWARE DEALER, OR DIRECT FROM BORLAND. 
For VISA and MasterCard orders, call 1(800) 255-8008: in California call (800) 742-1133. 

Lines are open 24 hours a dav. ' davs a week. 

Inquiry 33 


_ S54.95 SideKick 

copy-protected 

_ S84.95 SideKick 

noncopy-protected 

(Prices include S5 shipping and handling per order.) 

Check □ Money Order □ 
VISA □ MasterCard □ 

Card * __ 

Expiration Date _ 


Please be sure your system is an IBiM PC, AT, XT jr. or a true PC- 
compatible. PCjr, users must order noncopy-protected version. 

NAME _ 

ADDRESS _ 

CITY/STATE/ZIP _ 

TELEPHONE_ 

California residents add 6% sales tax. Outside USA add S10; payment must be by 
bank draft payable in the US and in US dollars. COD and purchase orders will not 
be accepted. 


m BORIPHD 

•)) INTERNATIONAL 

Borland International 
4113 Scotts Valley Drive 
Scotts Valley, California 95066 
TELEX: 172373 


818 
























LETTERS 


After several years of CP/M experience. 
I purchased an Apple lie in May. I have 
written and phoned Apple in Cupertino, 
the Apple distributor in Charlotte, and two 
Apple dealers. The response I have got¬ 
ten is difficult to accept. Based on the in¬ 
formation I have to date, the Apple lie 
Technical Manual. ProDOS Technical Manual. 
Pro DOS Users Kit. and Applesoft Technical 
Manual volumes 1 and 2 are unavailable 
and there is no official date for delivery 

My choice of the lie was based on the 
promise of true portability by the end of 
1984. The present availability of carrying 
cases and portable power supplies 
coupled with the continued assurance, by 
Apple, of the flat-screen display in 1984 
will provide the hardware I expected when 
I chose the lie. The total lack of technical 
information for the lie and the operating 
system will make software development 
almost impossible. 

Don Overton 
Atlanta. GA 

I found the letter by Dennis Dorns con¬ 
cerning the lack of technical support by 
Apple for its new ProDOS System very 
true. I am one of those newcomers to 
computers. It is indeed a nightmare try¬ 
ing to make sense out of Apple ProDOS 
from the scant instructions supplied with 
the Apple lie. 

For months I have been trying to buy 
several of Apple's manuals on ProDOS. 
especially BASIC Programming with ProDOS. 
The authorized Apple dealer has no idea 
when his shipment will come in. 

In my opinion any machine, no matter 
how excellent it may be, is no better than 
the instructions that teach the operator 
how to use it. It seems a pity that a com¬ 
pany that can spit out machines at such 
a terrific rate cannot supply the bare tools 
the operator needs to operate that 
machine. Imagine that same company's 
concern if. when its new production line 
was ready to roll, it found it had few in¬ 
structions on how to operate it. 

David D. Perry 
Ridgecrest. CA 

Take Back Your Mac 


I am outraged. Apple's original descrip¬ 
tions of the Macintosh, as quoted in the 
press, made it clear that the Macintosh 
was a 512K system that was being released 
in a temporary 128K version due to 
failures on the part of Apple's suppliers. 
Now we are told (in defiance of the ex¬ 
perience of any user of the machine) that 
the 128K Macintosh is a useful computer 


and will continue to be sold at the original 
price, while a 512K version will cost $1000 
more. What's more, any purchaser of the 
earlier 128K machine who desires to up¬ 
grade to 512K must pay the $1000 dif¬ 
ference in price. This policy is as blatantly 
unscrupulous a case of bait-and-switch as 
was ever practiced. 

As a professional programmer. I was in¬ 
trigued and excited by the concept of the 
Macintosh and eagerly awaited the release 
of the real. 512K. machine. As a consumer. 
I am disgusted by Apple's business prac¬ 
tices and have no intention of throwing 
good money after bad. I am especially 
frustrated by this decision of Apple's, since 
I am sure that it will strangle the Macin¬ 
tosh in its cradle, and so my already sub¬ 
stantial investment in the machine will 
have been for nothing. 

Kirk Rader 
Los Angeles, CA 

I openly plead for a programmer or pro¬ 
gramming team somewhere to develop 
RAM-disk software to use the 512K RAM 
on the "fat Mac'' as a RAM disk as well 
as for memory. 

A logical configuration to emulate the 
128K Mac would be 128K memory with 
a 384K RAM disk. Later, variable options 
of more memory and less RAM would be 
nice, but they are not essential initially. 
Good programs like Microsoft Word can 
use disk I/O to make files larger than 
memory and would not be limited by the 
main-memory constraint, but rather only 
by the RAM-disk memory constraint. 

Such a RAM disk must permit copying 
data to and from it. programs to and from 
it, and opening it. So designed, the system 
and major programs that use disk overlays 
could be loaded into RAM. with conse¬ 
quent lightning-speed operation. I believe 
such software is essential for the Mac to 
appeal to business. It would also make 
software development itself easier and 
faster. 

I've checked, and apparently Apple's 
own programming philosophy is opposed 
to this concept. If someone does do this. 

I hope he or she sells it for a reasonable 
price ($50 or less) or else releases it ac¬ 
cessibly into the public domain. Without 
such a development, my company will 
probably never buy a Mac and will prob¬ 
ably never develop software for it. 

Don Slaughter 
MicroCost Software 
Seattle. WA 

Perhaps two of the most often used words 
throughout articles dealing with the 


Macintosh are 'potential'' and "wait.'' The 
Macintosh was introduced over nine 
months ago. and still there is a lack of 
varied and practical software available for 
the computer. On the day of its introduc¬ 
tion Apple announced that "hundreds' of 
software companies had already had the 
Macintosh for up to two years. Software 
for the machine would be available in a 
torrential flood in a matter of weeks. Nine 
months later a real word processor (i.e., 
capable of handling more than eight or 
nine pages) is still not available, nor can 
I find a spelling checker, a true database 
manager, or a high-level language. If soft¬ 
ware companies have had over two years 
to work on their products and still have 
not fully developed what could be con¬ 
sidered "standard'' software products, just 
how long is the Macintosh software-devel¬ 
opment cycle? Is Apple truly supporting 
its software developers? 

Added to the problem of third-party 
software is the lack of support software 
from Apple itself. Nine months after the 
computer was introduced, an assembler 
has not even been made available, nor is 
a communication program like Maderm 
available yet. Neither of these programs 
is particularly tricky to write, and. in fact. 
Apple must have had a 68000 assembler 
in house for quite a while (rehosting an 
assembler from the Lisa to the Macintosh 
takes over nine months?). 

Many trade magazines and journals ap¬ 
parently wonder about these same prob¬ 
lems. Often an attempt is made to ra¬ 
tionalize Apple’s tardiness and lack of sup¬ 
port. The most common story is: "The 
Macintosh is a radically new computer re¬ 
quiring programmers to adapt to a com¬ 
pletely different kind of style, and besides. 
128K of memory makes for a tight 
squeeze on programs. When the 512K 
Macintosh is available, all kinds of fancy 
programs will appear and life will be 
wonderful again." 

Well, the 512K Macintosh was recently 
announced. Now I can easily find several 
stores advertising the 128K Macintosh for 
$1600 and the 512K Macintosh for $2400. 
Yet Apple wants the people who have 
already paid $2 500 to fork over another 
$995 for the 512K upgrade. The entire 
computer obviously costs far less than 
$1000 to make, since that is the price the 
university consortium schools pay. and 
you can be certain that Apple is not so 
dedicated to education that it would pass 
up this additional source of profit. 

If 128K is such a burden on software de¬ 
velopers. why wasn't the computer re¬ 
leased after the expanded memory was 


22 B Y T E • FEBRUARY 1985 





LETTERS 


available? This would have given devel¬ 
opers more time to work on their software 
as well. If Apple felt it just had to be in 
the market with a machine like the 128K 
Macintosh, why was it priced so high? At 
least Apple could have promised all the 
early purchasers a fair price (or even no 
cost) on the upgrade. 

I truly feel that Apple has treated its 
customers unfairly and with a certain 
amount of contempt. Prior to owning any 
Apple product I had a great deal of trust 
and respect for the company. In fact, it was 
that trust and respect that convinced me 
to buy a Macintosh even though I was 
aware of its limitations. I felt certain that 
Apple would take care of its customers. 
However, since buying a Macintosh, that 
trust and respect has gone. Even though 
I could recommend no alternative. I would 
not advise anybody to buy a Macintosh. 
Instead. I would recommend waiting un¬ 
til Apple straightens up or until another 
company recognizes the void and fills it. 

R.S. Luebkeman 
Rancho Cucamonga, CA 

Choosing a 
Campus Computer 


We have recently undertaken a project to 
introduce the use of microcomputers in 
the junior/senior Physical Chemistry 
course at the University of Florida. Al¬ 
though the students are reasonably 
mature and mathematically sophisticated, 
they have shown a surprising reluctance 
to "get their feet wet" via hands-on work 
with the microcomputers available for the 
course (six Sanyo MBC 555 units, chosen 
for their low price, reasonably good 
graphics, and ability to use the 8087 math 
coprocessor). 

There are several problems in introduc¬ 
ing a microcomputer course as described 
above at a large state institution such as 
the University of Florida (35,000 students), 
where no requirement exists that students 
purchase a microcomputer (not to men¬ 
tion a specific brand of microcomputer). 
Even if money were available to fund pur¬ 
chase of sufficient machines to handle ap¬ 
proximately 4000 technical students per 
year, along with space to house them, 
there remains the possible objection that 
the entire enterprise would be at least 
"type-specific." Thus we might select MS- 
DOS, Microsoft BASIC, and WordStar, 
which would slant the situation toward 
IBM PCs and/or compatibles. This might 
lead to a loud chorus of objections from 
Macintosh supporters, for example. 

( continued ) 



BAY TECH'S 
MULTIPORT-FOLIO 


YOUR BEST SOURCE 
FOR HIGH QUALITY, 

HIGH PERFORMANCE, 
DATA COMMUNICATIONS 
PRODUCTS 


Adds terminals to your computer, 
For example: 12 terminals can 
contend for 6 ports on a first 
come, first serve basis. 


Star network capable of any 
port-to-port connection with up 
to 18 ports communicating 
simultaneously. 


Enables up to 8 computers to 
automatically share a single 
printer. 


Multiport models with 5 to 18 
ports, $279 to $1,750. 


Allows up to 8 computers to use 
the same data communication 
line simultaneously. 


BAY TECHNICAL ASSOCIATES 


P. O. BOX 387 
BAY ST. LOUIS, MS 39520 


Expands your single RS232C serial 
port to 4 or 8 ports. Even more 
ports by cascading. 


CALL US TOLL-FREE 

1-800-523-2702 


Telex: 910-333-1618 (BAYTECH) 
EasyLink: 6277-1271 


PORT CONTENTION 


PORT NETWORKING 


PRINTER SHARING 


PORT MULTIPLEXING 


PORT SWITCHING 


Inquiry 29 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 23 





















LETTERS 


While some may disagree, 1 feel that the 
situation is more acceptable if reasonable 
alternate-brand selections do exist, such 
as the IBM PC. Seequa Chameleon, Eagle. 
Zenith 150. Tava. T^ndy 2000. etc. How¬ 
ever. selection of a unique machine such 
as the Macintosh is virtually an endorse¬ 
ment of a specific brand rather than type, 
to the exclusion of all others. 

I would be interested in hearing from 


others concerning this dilemma. Please 
write to me at the Chemistry Department. 
University of Florida. Gainesville. FL 32611. 

Robert J Hanrahan 
Gainesville. FL 

Icons Are Arcane 


Circa 5000 years ago. writing was invented 
in ancient Mesopotamia. This earliest 


known script, cuneiform, was derived from 
pictographic symbols that became stylized 
and standardized in form. Eventually it 
became mixed with phonetic elements un¬ 
til it was almost entirely phonetic. Our 
alphabet is most probably ultimately 
derived from ancient Egyptian—also 
originally a pictographic system. The point 
is this. Over thousands of years a phonetic 
and finally alphabetic system was devel¬ 
oped. To anyone who has gone through 
the painful process of learning cuneiform 
or Egyptian, the superiority of the 
alphabet is readily apparent. A picto¬ 
graphic system (Apple's "icons") requires 
that the user learn many, many symbols. 
My contention is that though users may 
find icons more "user friendly." ultimate¬ 
ly. as systems and software become more 
complex, the icon system will become 
more unwieldy and arcane than present 
systems. 

As a humanist who uses computers ex¬ 
tensively in my work. I would like to see 
user interfaces developed for micros that 
are faster, more streamlined ("elegant"), 
and smarter ( knowledge-based ) to aid 
in the learning process. It doesn't take the 
uninitiated user long to grow impatient 
with the Mac. 

Ann Marchant 
Berkeley. CA 

Bravo, Borland! 


This is the kind of letter I would like to be 
able to write more often. It's about the 
people at Borland International, who 
distribute Tlirbo Pascal and, if we are lucky, 
a lot of other programs. 

I've already spoken to Borland's pro¬ 
grammers about a problem, and with a 
completely satisfactory result. The latest 
event was my ordering of the Commodore 
64 CP/M version of Tlirbo Pascal. When it 
arrived, it was an MS-DOS disk, which I 
couldn't use. I scribbled a note on the in¬ 
voice and mailed the whole package back 
the same day, the same way it arrived, at 
a cost of about a dollar in postage. 

Today the United Parcel Service truck 
pulled up and delivered the correct 
replacement package—Second Day Air. It 
cost Borland $4. That is class. 

William T. Powers 
Northbrook. IL 

Sage Defended 


I wish to respond to Dr. Richard Peskin s 
appraisal of Sage computers ( A Second 
Opinion on the Sage." September 1984, 

( continued ) 


Graphics Takes A 
Quantum Leap Forward! 


W?rl 


THE INOVION PERSONAL 

GRAPHICS SYSTEM FEATURES: 

• The most advanced color mapping 
capabilities available. 

• 250,000 simultaneously displayable 
colors. 

• A palette of 2.1 million colors. 

• Frame Grabber/Digitizer to capture 
TV, VCR or Video Camera pictures. 

• Quality three-dimensional texture 
capabilities. 

• Built-in Icon/Menu software. 

• Completely Mouse/Trackball driven. 

• Fonts, Brushes, Microscope, Pat¬ 
terns, and Rotations. 


► A complete stand alone system. 

* A 19” enhanced color monitor. 

* 780K Graphics Memory. 

* 512 x 480 pixel display with 24 bits 
per pixel. 

► RS232C port allows access to all 
system functions and memory. 

» NTSC composite video and NTSC 
RGB signal. 

1 1-year warranty on graphics genera¬ 
tor and 90-day warranty on 
enhanced monitor. 

► Special introductory 30-day satis¬ 
faction guarantee. 

* Complete system for $4,495 


r ■ill'll 

iBH-gCEESaBI 

ML <11 


24 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 147 


























Introducing the Hercules" Graphics Card 
for the technical user. 


OK. We confess. The 
Hercules Graphics Card in 
the picture above isn’t a 
special version for the tech¬ 
nical user. 

In fact, it’s exactly 
the same as the standard 
Hercules Graphics Card 
running programs like 1-2-3™ 
and Symphony™ in more 
than 100,000 IBM® PCs. 

We just wanted to make 
the point that the Hercules 
Graphics Card is not only 
big with business users—it’s 
also the most popular high 
resolution graphics card for 
the technical user. 

Why? We run more 
software than anyone else. 

The Hercules Graphics 
Card is supported by more 
technical software than any 
other hi-res graphics card. 

There are word proc¬ 
essors that 
can produce 
publication 
quality documents with 
mathematical formulas. 

There are programs 
that enable your PC to 
emulate a graphics terminal 


and run mainframe graphics 
software. 

There are toolkits of 
graphics utilities that can be 
linked to popular program¬ 
ming languages. 

There are CAD pro¬ 
grams that can provide 
features normally associated 
with $50,000 systems. 

And we supply free 
software with 
each card to do 
hi-res graphics 
with the PC’s 
BASIC. No one else does. 

Hardware that set the 
high performance standard. 

When we introduced the 
Hercules Graphics Card in 
August, 1982, it set the 
standard for high resolution 
graphics on the PC. 

But we didn’t stop there. 
In the past two years, we’ve 
continually refined the 
original design. 

Tbday’s Graphics Card 
gives you two graphics 
pages, each with a resolu¬ 
tion of 720h x 348v, and a 
parallel printer port- 
standard. 


A 2K static RAM buffer 
elegantly eliminates scrolling 
flicker. And our exclusive 
safety switch helps prevent 
damage to your monitor. 

Convinced? Good. Now, 
how about a little color? 

Should you want IBM 
compatible 
color graphics 
for your sys¬ 
tem, then the 
new Hercules Color Card is 
the smart way to go. 

It gives you a parallel 
printer port and a size small 
enough to fit in one of the 
XT’s or Portable's short slots. 

And both Hercules 
cards are compatible with 
the new AT™ and backed by 
our two year warranty. 

Call 800 255-5550 Ext. 
408 for the name of the 
Hercules dealer nearest you 
and we’ll rush you a free info 
kit. See why the company 
that made the first graphics 
card for the IBM PC still 
makes the best. 

Hercules. 

We’re strong on graphics. 





Address: Hercules, 2550 Ninth St., Berkeley, CA 94710 Ph: 415 540-6000 Tblex: 754063 Trademarks/Owners: Hercules/Hercules Computer Technology, 1-2-3, 
Symphony/Lotus Development; IBM, AT/International Business Machines 


Inquiry 135 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 25 












LETTERS 


page 18) as lacking "many architectural 
features needed for multiuser, multitask¬ 
ing applications. This is a gross distortion 
of the facts, since, from the beginning. 
Sage has supplied an excellent multiuser 
BIOS capable of supporting not only 
multiple users but multiple operating sys¬ 
tems running simultaneously. I know of no 
other supermicro that can make this claim. 
Even single-user operating systems such 
as Softech's UCSD p-System appear to be 
multiuser on the Sage as multiple copies 
are run in memory partitions isolated by 
the Sage MU BIOS. The BIOS allows easy 
configuration of each user's time slice and 
priority, flexible mapping of RAM disks 
(yes, more than one!), memory and disk 
partitions, and serial ports and peripheral 
devices. Different operating systems may 
be allowed access to shared disk space. 

At last count, at least 11 operating sys¬ 
tems are supported, including CP/M 68K. 
Volition's Modula-2 system. HyperFORTH. 
and Whitesmiths's UNIX-like multiuser 
Idris. The Idris implementation currently 
available was ported to the Sage by Rakon. 
an Australian company. Rakon's version re¬ 


portedly runs 2.5 to 5 times faster on the 
same hardware as Logos Information Sys¬ 
tems’ (Dr. Peskin's firm). In this light. Dr. 
Peskin's opinion about Sage can hardly be 
characterized as ’objective technical 
assessment.” 

The new products announced in 
September by Sage (now Stride Micro) will 
have a hardware memory-management 
option to support UNIX System V with 
Berkeley enhancements. They also run 
faster (10 MHz standard. 12 MHz optional), 
support hardware floating point, utilize the 
industry standard VME bus, come stan¬ 
dard with Omninet networking hardware, 
and are even lower in cost. 

Ja i Gopal Singh Khalsa 
Millis. MA 

Improving the 
IBM Keyboard 


Where I work we have IBM PCs and X'ft 
in abundance. People are always griping 
about the poorly designed keyboard, i.e.. 
the long reach to the Return key and the 
dual-function 10-key pad/cursor controls 


that perform only one of their roles at a 
time. The complaints peaked around 
budget time, when data entry to spread¬ 
sheets became a paramount hassle. We 
found a partial remedy, however. Instead 
of switching between the 10-key pad and 
the cursor controls by using the Num Lock 
key. we found it easier to divide the labor 
between our two hands by locking in the 
10-key pad for data entry and then, to 
move to another cell, holding the left shift 
key down with our left hands and moving 
the cursor with the 10-key pad that then 
functions as a cursor control. 

Granted, this is not a perfect solution, 
but the roar did quiet. Now we'd like to 
know how to solve the problem of the 
reach to the Return key. 

W. TfcAvis Good 
Summit. NJ 

Software Swapping 


In response to Dear Thieves” (August 
1984, page 18). William Wright has ex¬ 
pressed the opinion that it is entirely 

( continued ) 



MicroSim's Probe is an interactive, comprehensive graphics post 
processor progam option that gives outstanding visual enhancement to 
your PSpice work. 


PSpice 

The circuit simulator that 
brings mainframe advantages 
to your micro. 

Now the industry-standard Spice, minus Spice’s original 
“bugs” has been brought to the IBM-PC. With PSpice, the 
electrical engineer can try out a circuit right at his or her desk 
without having to build it. Design and check in 20 minutes 
what normally takes four to eight hours and the wiring of two 
dozen transitors on a breadboard. Take chances. Explore. 
Re-work. Without the worry that someone’s waiting for 
the mainframe. 

• AC, DC and Transient Analysis 

• Up to 120 transistors per circuit 

• One-fifth the speed of VAX-11/780 

• Affordably priced at $950 (Quantity price breaks) 



MicroSim Corporation 

14101 Yorba Street • Tustin, CA 92680 • (714) 731-8091 

VAX is a trademark of Digital Equipment Corporation 

IBM-PC is a trademark of International Business Machine Corporation 


26 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 217 for Dealers. Inquiry 218 for End-Users. 





















Apple Owners: Increase your Display up to 455% and 

Get The Big Picture! 





| 40-Columns • 


80-Columns 


You know the importance of “Bottom Line” and cash-flow 
management in your daily operations. Original 40-column 
spreadsheets were adequate, 80-column spreadsheets 
were better, but even with 80-columns you still waste 
valuable time scrolling your spreadsheet searching for 
data. The Videx UltraTerm will provide you the tool you 
need to reduce wasteful searching, and free up your time 
to make important business decisions. 

Just look at the actual display photo above. The dark 
green portion of the spreadsheet represents the amount 
of information you get with a standard Apple display. The 
medium green area shows you what you get with ordinary 
80-column displays. Nice. But not enough. With UltraTerm, 
your business “Big Picture” is exploded up to a full 
128-columns by 32-lines (as shown by entire photo above), 
or 455% more data than you’ve previously had to work 
with. 


In addition to the obvious benefits of using the UltraTerm 
with your spreadsheet, you can gain depth,breadth,and 
power when using the new generation of word processors 
that exploit the UltraTerm’s vast array of display 
capabilities. Word processors that currently use 
UltraTerm’s expanded display formats include WORD¬ 
STAR, Word Juggler //e, Letter Perfect, Executive 
Secretary, Apple Writer II (with Videx Preboot), and Write 
Away. 

So, contact your local computer dealer today! If they are 
out of stock you can call Videx directly. Get THE BIG PIC¬ 
TURE today! 


Suggested Retail Price—$379.00 


UltraTerm is a trademark of Videx. Inc. Apple is a trademark of Apple Computer, Inc. 
Visicalc is a trademark of VisiCorp. Inc. 



idex 


1. Except colors which were added for illustrative purposes only. 1105 NE Circle Blvd., Corvallis, OR 97330 

2. Assuming VisiCalc and Apple 40 x24 display. Inquiry 324 503-758-0521 








































NEW from BORLAND! 


% 


■iffy 

0 ~ 

t 



TURBO TOOLBOX & TURBO TUTOR 

4 jr * 



. 

*• 


* ’ 












TURBO is much better than the 


Pascal IBM sells/' 

Jerry Pournelle, 
Byte. July 1984 

“TURBO PASCAL appears to violate 
the laws of thermodynamics. 

You won’t find a comparable price/ 
performance package anywhere. It 
is simply put. the best software deal 
to come along in a long time. If you 
have the slightest interest in 
Pascal. . .buy it/’ 

Bruce Webster. 
Softalk IBM: March 1984 







BORLAND 

INTERNATIONAL 

GIFT PACK 


ONLY, 


A SAVINGS OF $30! 


2 


What a gift for you and your friends! The extraordinary TURBO PASCAL 
compiler, together with the exciting new TURBO TOOLBOX and new TURBO 
TUTOR. All 3 manuals with disks for $99.95. 

TURBO PASCAL Version 2.0 (reg. $49.95). The now classic program 
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Inquiry 101 



Eco-C Compiler 

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We think Rel 3.0 of the Eco-C Compiler is the 
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Benchmark 

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Seive 

29 

33 

40 

Fib 

75 

125 

99 

Deref 

19 

CNC 

31 

Matmult 

42 

115 

N/A 


* Times courtesy of Dr David Clark 
CNC - Could Not Compile 
N/A - Does not support floating point 

We ve also expanded the library (120 func¬ 
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switches (including multiple non-fatal error 
messages). The price is still $250.00 and 
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30 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 173 


LETTERS 


wrong and dishonest to copy software, 
even for one's own use. He is absolutely 
right. But his statement is incomplete. 

The software industry, in general, has 
shown a total disregard for honesty in its 
marketing. A large portion of the available 
software is sold without proper testing. It 
is tested by us. after we pay a ridiculous 
price for it. Customer support just does 
not exist, and the documentation is often 
a joke. According to the "rules" I must buy 
WordStar for each machine in the office. 
And I do not have backup protection with 
some software. Even after paying their 
price I am held ransom! 

My complaint is not against all software 
publishers. Lotus, for example, has done 
a wonderful job of documentation and 
service. 

Mr. Wright is right. But incomplete. TWo 
wrongs don't make a right. But as long as 
the publishers are so blatant in their dis¬ 
honesty. software swapping will be with us. 

Dave Churcher 
Rye, NH 

Swift Remark 


I really got a big laugh out of Paul Bern¬ 
stein's letter ("Computers and Lawyers." 
August 1984. page 16) about the "argu¬ 
ment" between him and his fellow lawyer 
Robert Wilkins over whether lawyers need 
to know "terms such as RAM. bps.. . . 
and other foreign, often unnecessary 
technical terms."’ That from lawyers. ". . .a 
Society |that| hath a peculiar Cant and 
Jargon of their own. that no other mortal 
can understand, and wherein all of their 
Laws are written, which they take special 
Care to multiply; whereby they have 
wholly confounded the very Essence of 
Tfuth and Falsehood, of Right and Wrong." 

No comment could better be made on 
the subject than that by Jonathan Swift in 
Gulliver's Travels, Part 4: A Voyage to the 
Country of the Houyhnhnms, Chapter 5. 

William E. White 
Miami, FL 

Modula-2: Overrated? 


After reading all those pro Modula-2 and 
Ada articles in BYTE (August 1984), I at 
first feared l was the only one who har¬ 
bors mixed feelings concerning these lan¬ 
guages. I was relieved to find David V. Mof¬ 
fat's "UCSD Pascal vs. Modula-2; A Dis¬ 
senting View" (page 428). 

While I don't agree with all of Mr. Mof¬ 
fat's views (e.g.. that the lack of publica¬ 
tions on Modula-2 will become less 

( continued ) 


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LETTERS 


distinct in the future). I'd like to point out 
a couple of items that have escaped men¬ 
tion so far. 

The improved readability of Modula-2 
source, achieved by the no-longer-needed 
BEGIN...END brackets that contain Pascal 
compound statements, is obviated be¬ 
cause of the END statement that ter¬ 
minates all control structures apart from 
REPEAT. I would have preferred a specific 


end statement for each control statement, 
like ENDDO. ENDWHILE. ENDLOOP. 
ENDIF, etc. 

Pascal's lamented rigid order in which 
declarations have to be made shows its 
main advantage when it comes to soft¬ 
ware maintenance. I wouldn't want to look 
for that doubly defined global variable 
that crept in when an existing program 
was extended, were it possible to declare 


said variable anywhere near the pro¬ 
cedure that used it first, let alone in some 
external module. 

I find Modula-2's IF not much of an im¬ 
provement over that of Pascal as far as 
nested IFs are concerned, the latter of 
which I tend to avoid and use logical ex¬ 
pressions instead. Taking Robert J. Paul's 
recipe example (“An Introduction to 
Modula-2,'' August 1984, page 195). 
wouldn't you agree that 

IF (oregano IN recipe[1]) 

AND 

(thyme IN recipe[1]) 

THEN 

WRITELN( ‘Use oregano & thyme’) 
ELSE 

WRITELN( ‘Use only thyme’); 

is easier to understand than what ap¬ 
peared on page 198? 

Edmund Ramm 
Kaltenkirchen, West Germany 

What a shame that you did not include the 
article “UCSD Pascal vs. Modula-2: A Dis¬ 
senting View'' by David V. Moffat in the 
theme section of your August issue; it 
would have provided some balance in 
what was an informative but rather biased 
section. 

I write to support Mr. Moffat's thesis that 
Modula-2 has yet to be proved a signifi¬ 
cant improvement over UCSD Pascal. Hav¬ 
ing used UCSD Pascal since 1980, I can 
link in assembly-language routines, build 
libraries, and write units with hardly a sec¬ 
ond thought. For programmers, the in¬ 
equality of 

Benefits of Modula-2 > Cost of 

software + 
time to re¬ 
learn + time 
to rewrite old 
routines 

must be clearly shown to be true. I have 
yet to be convinced that the benefits 
outweigh the value of Pascal experience. 
Could it be that those software companies 
that have sold thousands of Pascal com¬ 
pilers in the past few years now fear that 
they are beginning to saturate the market 
and are promoting Modula-2 as a means 
of maintaining company profits? 

One small point: Am I the only one who 
finds that dozens of ENDs. some for IFs, 
some for FORs, some for LOOPs. make 
Modula-2 programs less easy to read than 
Pascal programs? 

Stuart A. Bell 
Sid mouth. Devon. England 
(continued on page 416) 



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32 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 26 
























FIXES AND UPDATES 


BYTE'S BUGS 


C Listing Bug 

Bob Bonomo picked out a bug in the C 
source listing for the quicksort function in 
the October BYTE Japan. (See "Bits and 
Pieces’’ by William M. Raike. page 369.) 

In listing 1 on page 374. the third WHILE 
statement should read: 

while (j > i && strcmp(base|j|. pivot) > =0) 

Our thanks to Mr. Bonomo. 

A Case of Misidentification 

A caption in our product description of 
the TUndy 1000 incorrectly identifies a 
screen display. (See The TUndy 1000” by 
G. Michael Vose. December, page 98.) 

On page 101. the caption identifies the 
screen display on the right as being pro¬ 
duced by DeskMate. The photo actually 
depicts a screen from IBM's HomeWord. 
a word-processing program that also runs 
on the TUndy machine. HomeWord is pro¬ 
duced by IBM's Entry Systems Division in 
Boca Raton, Florida. 

Penny Wise, Pound Foolish? 

A note arrived from Paul Hills of 
Launceston in Cornwall. England, telling 
us that we misstated the annual subscrip¬ 
tion fee for his club’s newsletter. (See 
Clubs & Newsletters. August, page 68.) 

The 6809 User Group Newsletter is available 
for £3 annually. Overseas subscriptions are 
$4.70 in the U.S. and $6 in Canada. 

Weather Report Incorrect 

Charles S. Barnaby. vice president of the 
Berkeley Solar Group, sent us a clarifica¬ 
tion concerning the computer service that 
his company offers. In Matthew Lesko's 
article "Low-Cost On-Line Databases” 
(October, page 167), it was incorrectly 
stated that the Berkeley Solar Group offers 
"the latest weather.” 

The Berkeley Solar Group has a large 
collection of weather data; however, this 
data is based on records at least several 
years old. The data is suitable for use with 
building energy-analysis software. Portions 
of this information are available through 


interactive inquiry but the bulk of it serves 
as input for hour-by-hour building simula¬ 
tion programs. 

The weather data is available for users 
of the Berkeley Solar Group's building 
energy-analysis software, which includes 
such programs as DOE-2. CALPAS3. and 
FCHART. The data can be used for other 
purposes, but its purchase must be 
negotiated on a case-by-case basis. 

We thank Mr. Barnaby for clarifying this 
inaccuracy on our part. The Berkeley Solar 
Group can be reached at 3140 Martin 
Luther King Jr. Way. POB 3289. Berkeley. 
CA 94703. (415) 843-7600. 

Books Have American Distributor 

Jeffrey A. Blackman of the Computer 
Science Press in Rockville. Maryland, sent 
us some information about five books 
mentioned in the November Books 
Received section (page 495). 

The books. A First Course in Formal lan¬ 
guage Theory. From Logic to Computers. LISP Pro¬ 
gramming. Microcomputers and Their Commercial 
Applications, and UNIX for Users, are all 
published by Blackwell Scientific; however, 
they are distributed in North America by 
the Computer Science Press. 

If you wish to order these books, con¬ 
tact Computer Science Press Inc.. 11 TUft 
Court, Rockville, MD 20850. (301) 
2 51-9050. 

Windy Day Bug 

Mark R. Parker of Seattle. Washington, saw 
an error in listing 1. the Module Windy- 
Day. in Eric Eldred's review "Volition Sys¬ 
tems' Modula-2” (June, page 353). 

In the procedure OpenWindow (page 
356). the line: 

Open (wind, 0, 1, 39); 
should read: 

Open (wind, 0, 0, 1, 39); 

because a call to open requires five 
parameters. The omitted second zero 
places the message at the upper left-hand 
corner of the screen. 


Also, the comment "Phony” should be 
changed to "little busy bee.” 

New Telephone Number 

Microserve in Tyler. Tfexas. which was men¬ 
tioned in the October BYTE, has a new 
telephone number for its network. (See 
"Low-Cost On-Line Databases’’ by 
Matthew Lesko. page 167.) 

The new telephone number is (214) 
581-3722. 

Photo Credits Due 

We inadvertently neglected to credit Lee 
Wright, a freelance photographer based 
in Medford. Massachusetts, for snapping 
the photos that accompanied Henry 
Brugsch’s article in the Guide to the Apple 
Personal Computers, a special supplement to 
the December BYTE. (See "Apple's New 
Modem and Access II.” page A58.) 

We apologize for this oversight. 

Address Change 

Sinclair Research, whose ZX Spectrum + 
was featured in the December BYTE 
What's New. has relocated. (See page 435.) 

The new address is Sinclair Research. 
Berkeley Square House. London W1X 5LB. 
England; tel: 01-499 2666; Tfclex: 265212. 


FEEDBACK 


More on POPLOG 

In the October BYTE U.K.. we inadvertently 
listed Aaron Sloman as the distributor for 
POP-11 and POPLOG. a pair of tools avail¬ 
able to researchers in artificial intelligence. 
(See "Pop and Snap” by Dick Pountain. 
page 381.) 

Mr. Solman informs us that POPLOG is 
marketed in the U.S by Systems Designers 
Ltd. International. Suite 201. 5203 Lees¬ 
burg TLrnpike. Falls Church. VA 22041. 
(703) 820-2700. In the U.K.. it's available 
from Systems Designers Ltd.. Systems 
House. 1 Pembroke Broadway. Camberley. 

( continued) 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 33 





















FIXES & UPDATES 



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Surrey. GUI5 3HX; tel: 0276 62244. 

Mr. Sloman has informed us that “POP- 
LOG is now the main official AI software 
development environment in the U.K. for 
Prolog and POP-11. The existing toy' LISP 
component (suitable for teaching) is being 
replaced by COMMON LISP" 

POPLOG. according to Mr. Sloman. 
comes with a large collection of on-line 
help files, teaching files, and libraries of 
utilities and demonstration programs. 
Mixed languages are supported, and a 
multiwindowed screen editor VED can be 
used with all three main languages. It runs 

Speaking of Least Squares 

Steven A. Ruzinsky saw a number of 
doubtful statements in Marco Caceci and 
William Cacheris's article “Fitting Curves 
to Data” (May. page 340). He cites these 
remarks: 

This is called the least-squares criterion. For 
random errors randomly generated (usual¬ 
ly a reasonable assumption), this is the best 
criterion of all. 

“This is simply untrue,” says Ruzinsky. “In 
order for least squares to be the best 
criterion, the errors must have indepen¬ 
dent and identical normal (Gaussian) dis¬ 
tributions. In situations meeting this re¬ 
quirement. least squares can be a max¬ 
imum likelihood estimate of the param¬ 
eters. For situations where the errors are 
not Gaussian, least squares is suboptimal. 
A good counter example to the authors' 
statement is the case where the errors 
have a binary distribution, e.g., a random 
sequence of Is and - Is. In this case. I 

Electronic Yellow Pages in LA 

The vice president of Buy-Phone Inc., 
David Lappen, sent us information about 
his company's database, which was left 
out of Matthew Lesko's article “Low-Cost 
On-Line Databases.'' (See October, page 
167.) 

Buy-Phone is an “electronic yellow 
pages” system serving the Los Angeles 
area. It has more than 10,000 listings in 
2 5,000 search categories, ranging from 
current movie listings, restaurant and 
department store offerings, to computer 
outlets. 

Access is free of charge to users. Busi¬ 
nesses pay $150 for a year's worth of ad¬ 
vertising; ads can be changed daily at no 
extra cost. Personal ads, which are also 
free, can be posted for two weeks. 

At 300 bps, call Buy-Phone at (213) 474- 
0270. At 1200 bps. call (213) 470-4679. 


on VAX computers under VMS and 
Berkeley UNIX. It's also available "on a 
growing number” of M68000-based UNIX 
machines. In North America it's $10,000. 
with a ninety-percent (90%) discount for 
educational institutions. 

“At present” writes Mr. Sloman. 
“POPLOG is too big for most personal 
computers. Our hope is that it will not be 
long before machines with at least 2 
megabytes of RAM and 40 to 100 mega¬ 
bytes of backup storage will be cheap 
enough to make POPLOG much more 
widely available for educational use.” 


believe one will find a minimax fit (also 
called “Chebyshev” or “1 oo ') much more 
statistically efficient than least squares.” 

Mr. Cacheris notes that the first state¬ 
ment was intended to be broad and that 
least-squares analyses are often used 
under less than optimal conditions since 
the results can be checked by various 
methods, such as sensitivity analysis. 

“Least-squares method is certainly best 
when the errors have identical distribu¬ 
tions . . . (which) we mentioned towards 
the end of our article when describing 
sensitivity analysis. We state that several 
synthetic data sets ... are made by add¬ 
ing identical normal distributions to the error¬ 
less curve. Thus, the least-squares fits to 
these synthetic data sets are the best fit 
to these data sets and the values of the 
parameters obtained should approach the 
experimental data's values of the param¬ 
eters if the error in the experimental data 
has identical normal distributions.” 


BYTE'S BITS 


Public-Domain Software Library 

The Houston Area League of PC Users 
(HADPC). a group of 1000-plus IBM Per¬ 
sonal Computer fans, maintains a library 
of public-domain and “shareware” (i.e., pay 
if you like it) software. Disks are available 
from the library for $2 per disk. For a 
listing of titles, send a self-addressed, 
stamped envelope to Nelson Ford. HAL- 
PC Librarian, c/o The Public Library. POB 
61565. Houston. TX 77208. 

Software authors wishing to share their 
public-domain or shareware programs are 
encouraged to contact the group presi¬ 
dent. Duane Hendricks. Other users 
groups interested in trades should contact 
Jack McClure at POB 610001, Houston, TX 
77208. ■ 


34 BYT E • FEBRUARY 1985 

















can add on all sorts of helpful accesso¬ 
ries. Like a printer, a modem for elec¬ 
tronic mail, a mouse for even easier 
operation and all the memory you 
need—up to 640K. 

If you’d like to meet this terrific 
computer, go to your nearest Author¬ 
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Just ask for the computer every¬ 
body gets along with. 

For the name of your nearest 
dealer, call toll-free: 1-800-544-3333. 
In Nebraska call: 1-800-343-4300. 

Inquiry 230 

□00 

A BETTER PERSONAL COMPUTER. 

IT'S EXACTLY WHAT YOU'D 
EXPECT FROM NCR. 


PtOPlE.TOO. 




&P/ffl', 


Getting along with all kinds of 
people is one of the most endearing 
qualities of the NCR PC4. 

It gets along with bosses, secre¬ 
taries, accountants, engineers, lawyers, 
everybody. 

Even first-timers take a liking to 
this computer the moment they take it 
out of the box. 

Perhaps its good looks have a lot 
to do with this. But its beauty is more 
than skin deep. 

Its smart, integrated cabinet takes 
up precious little space on your desk. 

There are no complicated wires or 
clumsy boxes to set up. All you have to 
do is plug it in. 

The keyboard is the same familiar 
layout your fingers know and love. Plus 
a couple of nice touches. Like separate 


cursor keys and a separate numeric 
keypad to make it easier to work with 
programs that have long lists and lots 
of numbers. 

The NCR PC even comes with two 
special self-teaching programs that 
will have you computing in a matter of 
minutes. NCR PAL shows you how to 
use the computer itself. NCR TUTOR 
introduces you to word processing, 
spreadsheets and other popular busi¬ 
ness programs. 

And if you get lost along the way, 
there’s a built-in HELP command you 
type in to get you back on track. 

Add all this up and you start to see 
why the NCR PC is so compatible with 
people. 

Of course, it’s also compatible with 
thousands of programs available at 
computer stores everywhere. 

And it’s compatible with industry 
standard hardware. Which means you 


THE NCR PC 


IS COMPffTIBli WITH 


© 1984 NCR Corporation. 






















Great Ideas 
look even better 
on a Princeton monitor 


Your Great Ideas deserve the best image you can give them. But, 
just as a music system's performance depends on the speakers, your 
computer system is limited by the quality of your monitor. 

Monitor performance can be measured. That's something you 
should know about. 

In other words, your Great Ideas should be seen, not blurred. 



Friends, Romans, 
countrymen, 
tend me your eyes , 


W. Shakespeare composing Great Ideas on a Princeton Monitor 


36 B YT E • FEBRUARY 1985 








"hings you should know about monitors 


Resolution The quality of 
i color monitor's image is 
lirectly related to its resolution, 
'he greater the number of dots 
ivailable within a given area for 
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nonitor features an extra¬ 
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A/hen used in conjunction with 
he PRINCETON Scan-Doubler 
:ard, the SR-12 runs from a 
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The MAX-12's dynamic focusing 
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Inquiry 255 


FEBRUARY 1985 • B Y T E 37 





























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acts without acting up. 

That’s because it has been thoroughly 
tested and proven on the job to assure 
reliability. And it comes with a full year’s 
warranty, backed by over 400 authorized 
service centers coast to coast. 

The Y10 is an awful lot of printer for very 
little money. But that’s not surprising when 
you consider that C. Itoh’s been producing 
superior printers for over a decade. What’s 
more, it has the strong backing of our 126- 
year-old parent company with over $60 
billion in annual sales. 

And the StarWriter Y10 is compatible 
with most of the popular PCs. It has a 256- 
byte buffer. And there is a full line of 
accessories available such as a cut sheet 
feeder and tractor feed. 

Little wonder C. Itoh printers are No. 1 
worldwide, with over 2.2 million sold annu¬ 
ally. And with the StarWriter Y10 we’re aim¬ 
ing to keep it that way. 

To meet your own perfect 10, just see 
your local C. Itoh printer dealer. Or for more 
information call 1-800-423-0300. 

Or write C. Itoh Digital Products, Inc. 
19750 South Vermont Avenue, Suite 220, 
Torrance, CA 90502. 





DIGITAL PRODUCTS 


f 




StarWriter is a Trademark of C Itoh Digital Products. Inc 
1985 C Itoh Digital Products. Inc 


38 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 38 for Dealers. Inquiry 39 for End-users. 













WHAT’S NEW 



R adio Shack's battery- 
powered notebook-size 
Model 200 has a flip-up 
16-line by 40-column LCD 
and a built-in 300-bps auto¬ 
dial modem. The Model 200 


comes with 24K bytes of 
RAM and 72K bytes of 
ROM. and it includes word¬ 
processing. spreadsheet, 
telecommunications, and 
address-book programs. 


Memory can be expanded 
with two 24K-byte banks of 
RAM, for a total of 72K, and 
a 32K-byte ROM chip. 

The system's keyboard has 
60 full-travel sculptured keys, 
12 special- and general- 
purpose function keys, and a 
power switch that is auto¬ 
matically depressed when 
the LCD/cover is closed. A 
cassete interface and 
parallel and serial ports are 
standard. The Model 200 
weighs 4 l A pounds and 
measures \\ 3 A by 8/2 by 2 3 / ]6 
inches. 

Although the Model 200 
uses the same processor as 
the Model 100. changes in 
ROM will prevent Model 100 
machine-language programs 
from running on the Model 


Datavue Portable Includes Disk Drive, 80 by 25 Display 


Q uadram's Datavue 25 is 
a 14-pound portable 
computer with a 360K-byte 
514-inch disk drive and a 
pivoting 80-character by 
25-line LCD. It features an 
8 3-key keyboard that com¬ 
municates with the com¬ 
puter through infrared 
signals. The Datavue 2 5 has 
an 80C88 microprocessor, a 
real-time clock. 128K bytes 
of memory and serial and 
parallel ports, it is powered 
either by an AC adapter/ 
recharger or by built-in bat¬ 
teries that last up to four 
hours. 

Monochrome graphics are 
available in either 640 by 
200 resolution or 320 by 
200 resolution with four 
levels of gray An internal 
300-bps modem is an op¬ 
tion. Memory can be ex¬ 
panded to 2 56K bytes using 
64K-byte chips or to 1 


megabyte using 2 56K-byte 
chips. Quadram also plans 
to release an external IBM 
PC-compatible bus- 
expansion chassis and an 
external second floppy-disk 
drive. 


The Datavue 25 should be 
available in March for 
$2195. Contact Quadram. 

43 55 International Blvd., 
Norcross. GA 30093. (404) 
923-6666. 

Inquiry 601 



200; BASIC programs will 
work on both. Other dif¬ 
ferences are a modified cur¬ 
sor key cluster, enhanced 
word-processing features, 
Microsoft's Multiplan spread¬ 
sheet in ROM, calculator 
function available from any 
program, and optional pulse 
or tone dialing. Normal bat¬ 
tery life is 10-16 hours 
depending on RAM size, or 
you can install rechargeable 
nickel cadmium (nicad) 
batteries. 

The Model 200 will retail 
for $999; 24K-byte add-on 
modules cost $249.95 each. 
Contact Tkndy/Radio Shack. 
One T&ndy Center. Fort 
Worth. TX 76102. or your 
local Radio Shack store. 
Inquiry 600 

Model 1131 Compass 
Has 128-column LCD 


G RiD Systems’ Model 
1131 Compass is a port¬ 
able computer with a 2 5-line 
by 128-column electro¬ 
luminescent display (ELD). 
GRiD says that the durable 
10 -pound computer is built 
to stand a shock equal to 
130 Gs. The Model 1131 
features 2 56K bytes of RAM 
(expandable to 512K bytes). 
384K bytes of nonvolatile 
bubble memory, a 300/1200- 
bps auto-dial/auto-answer 
modem, and the MS-DOS 
operating system in ROM. 

The Compass Model 1131 
costs $6795; with 512K 
bytes, it's $7995. The price 
of the original Model 1100 
is now $42 50. Contact GRiD 
Systems Corp., 2535 Garcia 
Ave., Mountain View. CA 
94043. (415) 961-4800. 

Inquiry 602. 

( continued ) 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 39 


















WHAT'S NEW 



Visage 

Videodisc Software 
Development System 

V isage has introduced a 
series of products for 
developing interactive 
videodisc software. Using an 
IBM PC or compatible per¬ 
sonal computer, a standard 
videodisc player, and 
Visage's controller card and 
software, developers can 
create interactive programs 
for educational applications 
using images from video¬ 
discs overlayed with 
computer-generated text and 
graphics. 

Visage's V:Link 1000 in¬ 
cludes an IBM PC expansion 
card and language-interface 
software, which together 
support NTSC graphics with 
2 56 by 192 overlay capabili¬ 
ties. The V:Link 1500 adds 
the ability to switch between 
a 2 56 by 192 overlay and a 
320 by 200 nonoverlay im¬ 
age. while the V:Link 1550 
allows both 256 by 192 and 
320 by 200 graphics to be 
overlayed on videodisc 
images. Prices range from 
$1150 to $2150. 

The V:Station 2000 family 
all feature IBM PC-com¬ 
patible computers with 2 56K 
bytes of RAM. one or two 
floppy disks, the V:Link 1550 
graphics board, and a 
13-inch RGB color monitor. 
Some of the V:Station con¬ 
figurations also include 
medium- or high-resolution 
touchscreens. 10-megabyte 
hard disks, and 512K bytes 
of memory. Prices range 
from $5995 to $10,850. 

Visage's products support 
the KoalaPad. Bit Pad. and 
Microsoft Mouse as graphics 
input devices. Optional sup¬ 
port packages allowing the 
Visage software and hard¬ 
ware to be used with BASIC. 
Pascal. dBASE II. and 8088 
assembly language cost 
$295 each. V:Paint I and II. 
$500 each, use the Micro¬ 
soft Mouse ($12 5 extra) to 
create images. Cables are 
available to link the V:Link 


B ritewriter is a four-pen 
color plotter that NEC 
says is compatible with 
Hewlett-Packard plotters. The 
Britewriter can plot at a 
speed of 60 millimeters per 
second (mm/s) in low-speed 


Commodore Announces 


C ommodore's B128 runs 
any program written for 
the Commodore 64 and has 
a number of additional 
capabilities. This sytem has 
128K bytes of memory, ex¬ 
pandable to 512K, and it 
can display 80 columns by 
2 5 lines of text in color on 
an optional monitor. In addi¬ 
tion to the 8500 processor. 


card to Sony. Pioneer. RCA. 
and Hitachi videodisc 
players. 

Visage supplies its V:EXEC 


mode and 112 mm/s in high¬ 
speed mode. Characters can 
be drawn at 4.6 cps in one 
color or 2.6 cps in four col¬ 
ors. The plotter comes with 
black, blue, green, and red 
felt-tip pens; an optional set 


128K Computer 


which is used to run Com¬ 
modore software, the B128 
includes a 2-MHz Z80 co¬ 
processor to run most 
CP/M-80 programs. 

The 92-key keyboard has a 
numeric keypad. 4 cursor 
keys. 4 numbered shiftable 
function keys, and 4 special- 
purpose function keys. Like 
the 64, the B128 can display 


and V:Draw software and 
one language interface with 
all V:Link and V:Station 
products. Contact Visage 


of colors includes violet, 
orange, brown, and pink 
pens. The plotter can be 
used with plain paper or 
transparencies up to 8 Vi 
inches wide. 

The Britewriter is available 
with parallel or RS-232C 
serial interfaces. It features a 
256-byte character and in¬ 
struction memory and sup¬ 
ports the ASCII character 
set. Because it uses the 
same commands as Hewlett- 
Packard 7470 and 7550A 
plotters, it works with most 
graphics programs that 
support Hewlett-Packard 
plotters. 

The Britewriter plotter will 
retail for $599. Contact NEC 
Information Systems Inc.. 

1414 Massachusetts Ave.. 
Boxborough. MA 01719. 

(617) 264-800. 

Inquiry 604 


16 colors and 8 indepen¬ 
dently movable sprites and 
can generate sound in three 
voices each with a range of 
eight octaves. The B128 
comes with the same serial, 
expansion, user, and joystick 
ports as the 64; it also in¬ 
cludes video interfaces for a 
standard television or an 
RGB or NTSC monitor. 

Commodore also intro¬ 
duced a faster disk drive for 
the Commodore 64 and 
B128. It transfers data to the 
64 at 320 cps, or to the 
B128 at 2000 cps. or. when 
running CP/M. 3200 cps. 

The Commodore B128 will 
sell for less than $400. Con¬ 
tact Commodore. Computer 
Systems Division. 1200 
Wilson Dr.. West Chester. PA 
19380. (215) 431-9100. 

Inquiry 605 


Inc.. 12 Michigan Dr.. Natick, 
MA 01760. (617) 655-1503. 

Inquiry 603. 

( continued ) 



40 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 




















NEW PRODUCT NEWS 
FROM TELETEK 



Name 


Company 
Address_ 


Sacramento, CA 95838 
(916) 920-4600 
Telex #4991834 
Answer back — Teletek 

Inquiry 310 


I'm interested ^ 
in information 
regarding: 

□ Systemaster II 
□ SBC 86/87 □ Z-150 MB 
□ Evaluation Program 
□ Teletek's S-100 Board Line 


Systemaster II. Responding to 
market demand for speed and in¬ 
creased versatility, Teletek is proud 
to announce the availability of the 
next generation in 8-bit technology 
— the new Systemaster II! The 
Systemaster II will offer two CPU 
options, either a Z80B running 
at 6 MHz or a Z80H running at 
8 MHz, 128K of parity checked 
RAM, two RS232 serial ports with 
on-board drivers (no paddle 
boards required), two parallel 
ports, or optional SCSI or IEEE-488 
port. The WD floppy disk control¬ 
ler will simultaneously handle 
8" and 5%" drives. A Zilog Z-80 
DMA controller will provide in¬ 
stant communications over the bus 
between master 
and slave. Add 
to the DMA 
capability a true 
dedicated inter¬ 
rupt controller 
for both on¬ 
board and 
bus functions, 
and the re¬ 
sult is un¬ 
precedented 
performance. 

Systemaster II will run under 
CP/M 3.0 or TurboDOS 1.3, and 
fully utilize the bank switching 
features of these operating systems. 


EELETEK 


SBC 86/87. As the name indi¬ 
cates, Teletek's new 16-bit slave 
board has an Intel 8086 CPU with 
an 8087 math co-processor op¬ 
tion. This new board will provide 
either 128K or 512K of parity 
checked RAM. Two serial ports 
are provided with individually 
programmable baud rates. One 
Centronics-compatible parallel 
port is provided. When teamed up 
with Systemaster II under TurboDOS 
1.3, this 5MHz or 8MHz multi¬ 
user, multi-processing, combina¬ 
tion cannot be beat in speed or 
feature flexibility! 


MH? SBC mi 

s/swmwnf 

WD Z-150 MB 


Teletek Z-150 MB. Teletek is 
the first to offer a RAM expansion 
board designed specifically for the 
Z-150/Z-160 from Zenith. The 
Teletek Z-150 MB is expandable 
from 64K to 384K. Bring your 
Z-150 up to its full potential by 
adding 320K of parity checked 
RAM (or your IBM PC, Columbia, 
Compaq, Corona, Eagle, or Seequa 
to their full potential). The Teletek 
Z-150 MB optionally provides 
a game port for use when your 
portable goes home or a clock/ 
calendar with battery backup! 

Evaluate the Systemaster II, SBC 
86/87 or Teletek Z-150 MB for 
30 days under Teletek's Eval¬ 
uation Program. A 

money-back guarantee 
is provided if not com¬ 
pletely satisfied! All 
Teletek products carry 
a 3-year warranty. 

(Specifications subject to 

change without 
notice.) 


4600 Pell Drive 




















WHAT'S NEW 



Modular Robot Kit 


C ybot's Tlitor is a 

modular robot with a 
five-axis arm designed for 
educational and training 
uses. Because the robot can 
be dismantled and reassem¬ 
bled many times, it helps 
you understand how 
robotics work. 

The package includes the 
robot arm. complete with 
five motors and a gripper, 
and the Controller module, 
which has one free S-100 
card slot for custom applica¬ 
tions. a standard RS-232C 
serial port, and an interface 
for an optional "teach pen¬ 
dant." You can control the 
robot arm by sending ASCII 
commands from a personal 
computer through the 
RS-232C port or by directly 


manipulating the arm with 
the teach pendant. 

Also available is an Op¬ 
tical Encoder Set. Since the 
set indicates the actual posi¬ 
tion of one of the motors 
(five are needed to monitor 
all five axis motors), a full 
feedback loop can be used 
to make sure the robot arm 
is precisely where it's sup¬ 
posed to be. 

The complete Cybot Tutor 
robotics kit costs $3395. 

The optional teach pendant 
is $129.95. Each Optical En¬ 
coder Set is $70. Parts of 
the robot kit can be pur¬ 
chased separately. Contact 
Cybot Inc.. 12 510 128th Ave. 
NE. B-5. Kirkland. WA 
98034. (206) 823-4156. 

Inquiry 606 


Computer Satellite Service 


S atellite Broadcast Net¬ 
work has announced a 
satellite service that will 
transmit financial and news 
information to personal 
computer owners. SBN plans 
to have the service opera¬ 
tional in May. You will need 
a 12-GHz satellite-receive 
antenna, a low-noise 
amplifier, a solid-state 
receiver, and SBN's 
demodulator; all are 
available from SBN for $695. 
SBN will also charge a fee 
for access to each type of 
information, starting at 
about $2 5 per month. 

SBN will use multiple 
9600-bps channels. Some 
channels will broadcast news 
and weather information, 
others will transmit stock 
and commodity prices. One 
channel might permit down¬ 
loading of software sample 
programs, while another 
could include special-interest 
database information. A 
user could place a request 
for special database infor¬ 
mation with modems and 
telephone lines, but the 
response could be broad¬ 


cast via satellite to avoid 
phone charges. A special 
header code would ensure 
that only one person could 
decode the information. 


Contact Satellite Business 
Network Inc.. 212 West 
Superior St.. Chicago. IL 
60610. (312) 266-9844. 

Inquiry 607 


Sord Adds 80 by 25 
Display to IS-U 


S ord has released a ver¬ 
sion of its IS-11 Consul¬ 
tant computer with an 
80-character by 25-line 
liquid-crystal display and a 
built-in 300-bps modem. The 
6 ‘/ 2 -pound IS-11C has 80K 
bytes of RAM (expandable 
to 144K), 72K bytes of ROM. 
a 128K-byte microcassette 
tape drive. 62 full-travel 
sculptured keys plus 8 
special function keys, and a 
CMOS Z80A microprocessor 
running at a speed of 3.4 
MHz. In addition to parallel 
and serial ports, the IS-11C 
can interface with a bar¬ 
code reader, a separate 
numeric keypad, and op¬ 
tional 64K-byte ROM car¬ 
tridges. Word-processing and 
communications software 
are standard in ROM. 

The IS-11C should be avail¬ 
able this month for $1495. 
For more information, con¬ 
tact Sord Computer of 
America Inc., 645 Fifth Ave.. 
New York. NY 10022. (212) 
759-0140. 

Inquiry 608 

( continued ) 



42 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 




















PROBLEM? 

UNIX™ and DOS™ At the Same Time! 




Looking at an IBM PC/AT? Happy with DOS but want 
UNIX? Happy with UNIX but want DOS? Want them 
working together? 

Get The Connector!™ 

The Connector is a revolutionary product that allows 
DOS applications to run on the IBM PC/AT or XT 
under VENIX/86 (the first licensed AT&T UNIX 
operating system for the IBM PCs) or PC/IX. That 
means you can add one or more terminals to your AT 
which runprograms using multi-user VENIX/86 to 
share the disk and printer. Switch between UNIX and 
DOS at the console with a single command. And run 
more than one task simultaneously. Like running a 
spelling check in the background while you print a 
report and run Lotus 1-2-3™ or dBasell™ 

Get yourself an AT and load it with VENIX. Collect 
your DOS and/or UNIX applications. We’ll supply The 
Connector. The right solution to your software per¬ 
sonality problems. 

Call for complete details. 

Unisource Software Corp., Department 4109, 

71 Bent Street, Cambridge, MA 02141. 

Telex 92-1401 /COMPUMART CAM 


Also 
available 
on the 
PC/XT and 
compatibles. 


UNIX is a trademark of AT&T Technologies, Inc. DOS is a trademark of Microsoft. Inc. PC/AT and PC/XT are trademarks of IBM. The Connector is a trademark 
of Uniform Software Systems, Inc. VENIX/86 implementation by VcnturCom. Inc. 1-2 } and LOTUS are trademarks of Lotus Development Corp dbasell is a 
trademark of Ashton-Tate. 


Inquiry 318 


Getting UNIX Software 
Down to Business 

FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 43 












WHAT'S NEW 


Digital Filtering Chip for Speech Processing 


K urzweil Applied In¬ 
telligence has intro¬ 
duced the KSC 2408 digital 
filter chip for use in sound¬ 
processing applications. 


Each of the eight filters in 
the KSC 2408 processes 24 
bits of information (with 48 
bits accumulated at a time). 
Each of the filters processes 


information in a given fre¬ 
quency range; Kurzweil says 
that dozens of filters—or 
many 2408 chips—would be 
needed to divide up the fre¬ 
quency spectrum of the 
human voice enough to 
make speech recognition 
possible. 

The 2408 can process 
sound up to a sampling fre¬ 
quency of 12 5 kHz (12 5,000 
cycles per second) if only 
two filters are activated; if 
all eight filters are activated, 
the maximum sampling rate 
is 32 kHz. Since the chip is 
programmable, it can be 
used for other types of 
digital filtering, including 
high-pass, band-pass, or low- 
pass. 

Kurzweil plans to market a 


10,000-word vocabulary 
speech-recognition system 
and is working on develop¬ 
ment of a voice-activated 
typewriter. Company 
founder Raymond Kurzweil 
earlier developed the 
Kurzweil Reading Machine, 
which can read text for the 
blind regardless of the 
typeface, and the Kurzweil 
2 50 digital keyboard (music 
synthesizer). 

The Kurzweil 2408 digital 
filter chip costs $81 for a 
3-MHz version or $101 for a 
6-MHz version; quantity dis¬ 
counts are available. Contact 
Kurzweil Applied Intelligence 
Inc., 411 Waverley Oaks Rd.. 
Waltham. MA 02154, (617) 
893-5151. 

Inquiry 609. 



Twelve Million Instructions per Second 


A ccording to Cromemco. 

its Maximizer copro¬ 
cessor subsystem executes 
an average of 12 million in¬ 
structions per second. The 
Maximizer features a 
2900-series ECL (emitter- 
coupled logic) bit-slice pro¬ 
cessor running at 48 MHz. It 
also has 16K bytes of 50-ns 
RAM. 16 dual-port registers, 
and 4096 48-bit words for 
downloaded microcode in¬ 
structions. Cromemco says 
the chip's speed is en¬ 
hanced by the use of a 
60-ns multiplier chip and a 
doubly pipelined instruction 
path. Most instructions ex¬ 
ecute in 62.5 ns, though 
some may take as long as 
12 5 ns. 

The Maximizer comes on 
two S-100 (IEEE-696) bus 
boards that plug into 
Cromemco's microcom¬ 
puters. The system runs 
under the company's Cromix 
operating system, and it will 
soon run under UNIX 
System V as well. 

The Maximizer supports 
FORTRAN, Pascal, and C. 
Also available is MAXASM. 


a microcode assembler used 
to write custom microcode 
for applications where ex¬ 
ecution speed is critical. 


D ata Access Corpora¬ 
tion's DataFlex 2.1 is a 
16-bit version of the com¬ 
pany's multiuser relational 
database programming 
system. It permits over 16 


The Maximizer retails for 
$3495; the MAXASM Micro¬ 
code Assember costs $2995. 
Contact Cromemco Inc., 280 


million records per file, up 
to 250 files, each as large as 
the operating system will 
handle (up to 2 gigabytes, 

32 megabytes in MS-DOS), 
and use of unlimited RAM. 


Bernardo Ave.. POB 7400. 
Mountain View, CA 94039. 
(415) 964-7400. 

Inquiry 610 


The package includes a 
relational database com¬ 
mand language, a custom 
menu system, and an ap¬ 
plication generator. Versions 
of the program are available 
for such operating systems 
as MS-DOS/PC-DOS 1.1 
through 3.1, CP/M. CP/M-86, 
Concurrent CP/M-86. MP/M. 
MP/M-86, and TUrboDOS. 
DataFlex also operates 
under a number of network¬ 
ing systems. 

Pricing depends on the 
computer, operating system, 
and number of users; a 
single-user IBM PC version 
is $995. A separate run-time 
version is available. For 
details, contact Data Access, 
852 5 Southwest 129 Terrace, 
Miami. FL 33156-6565. (305) 
238-0012. 

Inquiry 611. 

(continued on page 421) 



Data Access Enhances Database Program 


44 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 

















Need RGB color and 



TTL monochrome 
support from a A- 
single board? *4; 


7 / There's 
■T - y only one 

INrELUGENr 

-#w decision! 


r INrELUGENr B-450 
Mono/Color Display Card 


Color Graphics Mode: 640 dots x 200 lines 


TTL Monochrome Mode: 640 dots x 350 lines 


Interlace Mode: 640 dots x 400 lines 


ook no further, the INTELLIGENT 
B-450 has it all. Designed to work 
with the IBM PC, PC XT, and PC AT, 
the INTELLIGENT B-450 is also suitable 
for IBM PC look-alikes. In addition to a 
parallel printer port, the B-450 has fourteen 
different screen modes which cover everything 
from medium-resolution monochrome text to 
high-resolution color graphics with interlace. 


Everyone from the ordinary user to the CAD/CAM 
specialist will find the B-450 is just right. 

Sound good? With a suggested retail price 
of only $294, it's nothing less than great! 

IBM and IBM PC are registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation. 

INrELUGENr 
DATA SY51EM 

Intelligent Data System, Inc. 

14932 Gwenchris Ct., Paramount, CA 90723 
Free Tel: (800)325-2455 Calif. Tel: (213)633-5504 Telex: 509098 


Inquiry 150 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 45 

































Compupro System Component, 


Components are the essence of your computer. 
Without the right components, you’re restricting 
your system’s potential for maximum productivity. 

CompuPro components enable you to make the 
most of your computer’s capabilities. Choose from 
more than 25 boards to build or expand your system 
.. .to any of our ten fully integrated models. You 
can add more users to your CompuPro system, 
increase its memory, add a hard disk drive—all 
with modular components that mesh perfectly 
with your existing system. 

Since 1973, our design team has been recognized 
for creating the highest performing, most reliable 
products at the lowest possible price. For the 
toughest business, scientific and industrial com¬ 
puting environments—across the country and 
around the world—make CompuPro IEEE 696/ 
S-100 components the essence of your system. 


Cpu Boards 


CPU 68K™ 68000-based board with sockets for memory 
management unit and up to 8Kx16 (16 Kb) of EPROM. 

CPU 86/87I M 8086-based board with sockets for 8087 math 
processor and 80130 firmware chips. Compatible with 8- and 
16-bit memory. 

CPU 8085/88I M The original, much imitated dual processor 
board delivers 8-bit, 16-bit, or 8- and 16-bit computing capability. 

CPU-Z ™ Includes all standard Z80B features. Downward compati¬ 
bility with the vast library of 8080 software. 

CPU 32016I M A true 32-bit processor for the desktop micro¬ 
computer. Compatible with 8- and 16-bit memory. 

CPU 286™ Based on the high-performance iAPX 80286/1016-bit 
processor. 100% software compatible with 8086 and 8088 proces¬ 
sors for unprecedented speed and power. 


Cmos Static 12 Mhz Memory Boards 


RAM 22I M 256Kx8 or 128Kx16—works automatically with 8- or 
16-bit processors. A low-power, high-density RAM board. 

RAM 23I M 128Kx8 or 64Kx16—works automatically with 8- or 
16-bit processors. A low-power, high-density RAM board. 

ti/immmm 

512K or 2 Mb disk memory board. Emulates disk drive operation 
and runs under CP/M® or MP/M™ Can increase operating speeds 
up to 3500%. Expandable up to 4 Mb for even more storage. 

46 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 


'Dual Floppy Disk Subsystem 


Two 8" floppy drives provide up to 2.4 Mb of formatted storage. 
With all-metal enclosure, Disk 1A™ controller, rugged power 
supply, cables, and software: Digital Research’s CP/M-80™ and 
CP/M-86® 


8 ” Floppy Hard Disk Subsystem \ 


One or two 8" floppy disk drives and one 20 Mb, 40 Mb or 80 Mb 
hard disk drive in all-metal enclosure with controller, rugged power 
supply, cables and software. CP/M-80 and CP/M-86. 


Disk Controller Boards 


Disk 1AI M High-performance, high-speed floppy disk controller 
for 8" and 5V4 * drives; reads and writes most popular formats. 

Disk 2™/Selector Channel™ A high-performance 8" Winchester 
disk controller with high operating speed and flawless DMA. 






he Essence Of Computing 



System Support 11 


Clock/calendar; math processor option; RS-232C serial port; 
interval timers and interrupt controllers; plus many more useful 
features. 

CompuPro’s extensive System 816 series of fully integrated single- 
and multi-user microcomputers includes eleven IEEE 696/S-100 
bus models offering 8-, 16- or 32-bit operation, and our 
CompuPro 10 and CompuPro 286 business computers. 

All are CP/M or MP/M based, enabling users to access more than 
3,000 industry standard application programs. 


Desktop Enclosure 2 


With shielded/terminated 21-slot motherboard, power supply, fan, 
dust filter, rugged all-metal construction. 


“Bits, Bytes and Buzzwords” is a primer for those who want to 
get started right in business computing. 25 pages. 

“CompuPro Product User Manuals,” Volume 1.250-plus pages. 
“CompuPro Product User Manuals,” Volume 2.300-plus pages. 

“Interfacing to S-100/IEEE 696 Microcomputers,” by Mark Garetz 
and Sol Libes. 321 pages. 

Individual technical manuals also available. 


E33SB 


All CompuPro products are backed by a one year limited warranty 
with a two year option. We also offer nationwide on-site service by 
Xerox Americare™-free with the purchase of designated systems. 


Disk 3™ A high-performance Winchester disk controller for 5V4" 
hard-disk drives. High speed “burst mode” DMA transfers each 
disk sector in a block. 


Interface Boards 


Interfacer 3™ Eight RS-232C serial ports 
(2 synchronous/asynchronous, 6 asynchronous). 

Interfacer 4I M Three RS-232C serial ports, one parallel port, one 
Centronics parallel port. 


The Essential Computer 


CompuPro. 

3506 Breakwater Court, Hayward, CA 94545 


EJESB 

Multi-user system front-end processor with 16K on-board RAM. 
Intended for OEM applications only. 


High-Performance Motherboards 


Quiet, fast and reliable. Shielded with active termination. A variety 
of formats (6,12 or 21 slots) offers maximum flexibility. 

Inquiry 58 


For further information and the location of the participating 

Full Service CompuPro System Center nearest you, call 
1-800-367-7816. In California call (415) 786-0909 ext. 206. 


^1984 CompuPro 

CP/M and CP/M-86 are registered trademarks and MP/M and CP/M-80 are trademarks of Digital 
Research Inc. SuperCalc is a trademark of Sorcim Corp. dBASE II is a registered trademark of Ashton¬ 
Tate Americare is a trademark of Xerox Corp. MDRIVE is a registered trademark and CPU 68K. 

CPU 86/87, CPU 8085/88, CPU-Z. CPU 32016. CPU 286, Disk 1A. Disk 2. Selector Channel, Disk 3, 
RAM 22. RAM 23. Interfacer 3, Interfacer 4, System Support 1. MPX-1 and The Essential Computer 
are trademarks of CompuPro 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 47 











ASK BYTE 


Conducted by Steve Ciarcia 


Corona Compatibility 


Dear Steve. 

I've had my Corona PC for about a year 
now. and for the first time I've run into an 
incompatibility with the IBM PC. The prob¬ 
lem is that the IBM PC has an extra open 
socket built into it to add a ROM or 
EPROM, and the Corona doesn't. A few 
programs on the market make use of this 
socket, including a genetics program I am 
interested in. Is there a fairly simple way 
to add an extra ROM chip? 

Another problem is that my BIOS is writ¬ 
ten on a 28-pin 2764, while the chip for 
the genetics program is on a 24-pin 
2732A. How can I use the 2732 in my Cor¬ 
ona, and what is the difference between 
a 2732 and 2732A anyway? 

Yet another problem is the Corona's in¬ 
compatibility with IBM graphics. Tb get 
graphics on the IBM, you must buy a 
graphics color card, which uses memory 
locations B800 to BCOO hexadecimal. On 
the Corona, different RAM locations are 
used for graphics. Is there a way to modify 
programs that need the color card (e.g., 
Flight Simulator) so that they will work on 
the Corona? It may not be that difficult 
because there is a graphics driver by HST, 
which if loaded before Lotus 1-2-3, 
enables 1-2-3 to draw graphs perfectly on 
my screen. 

Richard Berman 
King of Prussia, PA 

You should be able to add a ROM to 
the Corona by installing it on an expan¬ 
sion board with the proper interfacing 
circuitry. This could be built on a PC pro¬ 
totyping board, such as those produced 
by Vector Electronic Co., POB 4336, 
12460 Gladstone Ave, Sylmar, CA 91342, 
(818) 365-9661. Since all 20 address lines 
are available in the I/O channel (expan¬ 
sion slots), you can set up the address¬ 
ing as required for the ROMs with your 
genetics program. There could be inter¬ 
ference between the Corona's BIOS ROM 
and the add-on ROM. IBM uses 40K 
bytes out of the 48K bytes of reserved 
ROM space, and I suspect that the 
Corona uses the same space to preserve 
compatibility with IBM. 

The 2 732s are programmed at -h 25 V, 


while the 2 732As require only 21 V. 

A possibility exists that the HST graph¬ 
ics-driver program you mention may 
allow you to run the new Microsoft Flight 
Simulator on your Corona but not the 
original version. The new version can be 
loaded from DOS with the command FS. 
so a driver can be loaded ahead of the 
program. The original version could be 
loaded only by rebooting, which of 
course wipes out the graphics driver. See 
your dealer for a demonstration before 
you buy because there may be other in¬ 
compatibilities not fixed by the HST 
driver.— Steve 


Source Book Needed 


Dear Steve, 

As a computer counselor, I help clients 
with hardware and software purchases, 
checking sources and buffering clients 
from high-pressure salespeople. Since I 
am not affiliated with any computer manu¬ 
facturer or outlet, I do not limit my clients 
to the selections of a particular store. 
However, this lack of affiliation means that 
I do not receive promotional materials, 
which limits my effectiveness. Can you 
recommend any source book that lists 
various computer manufacturers and gives 
at least minimal specifications on their 
products? 

Patricia Selk 
Stafford, VA 

Many sources of information of the 
type you need are available. First, most 
computer magazines, including BYTE, 
publish reviews of microcomputers, pe¬ 
ripherals, and accessories. These are a 
good source of unbiased information. 

Second, you can get promotional infor¬ 
mation from manufacturers by writing to 
them on your letterhead, explaining your 
needs. Their addresses are available in 
ads in BYTE and other magazines and are 
frequently published in buyers guides 
and directories available at most com¬ 
puter stores and many bookstores. 

A third source is companies that spe¬ 
cialize in publishing survey reports on this 
type of equipment. One of these is Data- 
pro Research Corporation, 1805 Under¬ 


wood Blvd., Delran, NJ 08075, (800) 
257-9406 -Steve 

Drive-Head Problem 


Dear Steve. 

I bought an Atari 800 and two Atari 810 
disk drives three years ago. Some time 
ago. one of the drives began to have prob¬ 
lems. Before realizing that it was only a 
burned-out IC. I measured the head's 
resistance with a digital tester. Since then, 
the drive seems to be able to write but 
does not read. I think I've magnetized the 
head. I tried to demagnetize it with various 
methods (including the use of a commer¬ 
cial head demagnetizer for cassette 
recorders), but I haven't had any success. 
If you think I must replace the head, could 
you tell me where I could buy it? 

Odino Ciai 
Buenos Aires, Argentina 

Digital testers normally do not supply 
enough current to damage a disk-drive 
read/write head. You did not say whether 
you could write to a disk and read it from 
the other drive. It is possible that the 
alignment of the head was disturbed 
when you were making your tests. Try 
some cross-checks to see if that is the 
case. Also, check the obvious things, such 
as dirt on the head and a worn head-load 
pad. The head-load pad is a little felt pad 
that keeps the disk in contact with the 
head. If it is worn, data may not be prop¬ 
erly read or written. Check the continui¬ 
ty of the read head with an ohmmeter 
or your digital tester. If the head coil is 
open, see if there is a mechanical break 
in the wiring. 

If you are convinced that the head is 
defective, a replacement can be obtained 
from Micro Peripherals Inc., 9754 Deer- 
ing Ave., Chatsworth, CA 91311, (213) 
709-4202- Steve 


Sharing Files 


Dear Steve, 

We have several Eagle PCs in our 
analytical laboratory, all of which use two 
pieces of software: pfs:File and Lotus 

( continued ) 


48 B Y T E • FEBRUARY 1985 


COPYRIGHT © 1985 STEVEN A. CIARCIA. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 








U*X4*J f €***+*/ 4^# SUV ^v*^Ar 

^Uv 4 ^* 2 * C^ThsCt^UZZO' ^v /v C&*%£.**+*&+ 

#^W ^ K#<» <Ai Af 4t A ^O ^HyC^&ik/ / ^0k f t 


€Ju£j£J ry^m^j C±+jO ^ica4Zk/ w 



The picture in this ad is 
actually an 18" by 24" col¬ 
lector's item-an originally 
commissioned museum- 
quality print. This month, the 
Gettysburg print is yours, 
absolutely free, at most com¬ 
puter stores that carry 
Leading Edge Word 
Processing. 

For the name of the dealer 
nearest you, give us a call at 
1-800-343-3436. 
1617)449-4655. 


A 


LEADING EDGE 

LEADING EDGE PRODUCTS INC 
SOFTWARE DIVISION. 

21 HIGHLAND CIRCLE 
NEEDHAM HEIGHTS. MA 02194 


WORD PROCESSORS AT THE LEADING EDGE 


Ah, the great ones... 

They organized their ideas, their intui¬ 
tions, their idioms. They set them down, 
sorted them out, arranged them and 
re-arranged them till they came out right. 

They used small scraps of paper to 
record huge hunks of Truth; primitive 
tools to produce profound prose. But 
when the words finally went forth, they 


made indelible marks on all who read 
them. 

The amazing thing is that these mon¬ 
umental processors of words, did it 
without the benefit of monumental help. 

Like Leading Edge Word Processing: 
the easiest to use, yet most potent 
piece of software ever created to take 
full advantage of all the power inherent, 
but until now un-tapped, in today's 


most sophisticated personal computer. 
(Like the IBM * PC and the even faster 
and more powerful Leading Edge ” & 
AT&T.) 

The heart and soul of it is a 51 / 4 " 
floppy disk, elegantly logical instruction 
manual and documentation ... every¬ 
thing. And what you end up with is 
word processing at the leading edge. 


LEADING EDGE “ WORD PROCESSING FROM $100 

IBM IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION 
LEADING EDGE IS A TRADEMARK OF LEADING EDGE PRODUCTS. INCORPORATED 


Inquiry 178 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 49 





ASK BYTE 



MINORITY 

HI-TECH 
INDUSTRIES 


CALL TOLL FREE 

1 - 800 - 428-7979 

Call on Other Items Not Listed 


PRINTERS • PLOTTERS 

Epson Cali 

Enter 

Sweet-P 6 Pen Plotter. $730 

Inforunner 

Riteman Blue Plus 140CPS IBM . $272 

Riteman Plus 120CPS. 220 

Riteman 15 160CPS 8K Butter. 400 

Riteman Blue Mac 140CPS 383 

Riteman L Q. 215 

Juki 

5500. Call 

6100. 

6300. 

Legend 
Okidata 
Silver Reed 

EXP400 P or S. 

EXPSOOPorS. 

EXP550 P or S. 

EXP770 P or S. 

MODEMS • MONITORS • DRIVES 

Anchor 

Mark XII. $235 

Express 1200 Baud (Hayes Exact). 272 

Volksmodem 1200 Baud.. 1 80 

Hayes 

Smartmodem 1200. $480 

Smartmodem 1200B (IBM). 405 

Novation 

Smart Cat Plus 2400 Baud. $805 

Smart Cat Plus 1200 Baud 200 

Access 1-2-3 w/Crosstalk (IBM) 350 

Apple Cat II . 105 

Zoom 

Netmaster (He. 11 + ). $115 

Amdek Cali 

Taxan 

Amber 12" 116. $115 

Amber 12" 122 (IBM). 

RGB 12" 425 (IBM) . 

RGB 12" 440 (IBM ULTRA-RES). 

Persyst Bob Board (tor 440). 

NEC. 

Team-Mate 

1110 Internal 3 3MEG Disk (IBM). 


$400 

Call 

Call 

Call 


$240 

303 

305 

780 


131 

415 

568 

300 

Call 


$608 


COMPUTERS • CARDS 

NEC 

PC-8401 A Computer. $830 

PC-8201 A Computer. 200 

PC-8201 A-90 Battery Pack. 17 

PC-8206A 32K Ram. 173 

PC-8271 A AC Adapter . 17 

Paradise 

Modular Graphics Card . . $260 

MGC with A & B Module. 526 

SOFTWARE * DISKETTES 

Enable Cali 

Lotus 1-2-3.Call 

Micropro 

WS Pro (IBM). $235 

WS 2000 . 245 

WS2000- . 205 

Practicorp 

Practiword/Base/Calc III (IBM) $180 

Above each separate. 60 

Maxell 

MD-1 (Oty 100). $172 

MD-2 (Qty 100) . 220 

MF-1 3 5" (Qty 100) HP & MAC 303 

Fuji 

MD-1 (Qty 100). $150 

MD-2 (Qty 100) . 100 

MF1 3 5" (Qty 100) HP & MAC. 200 

MD2HD (Qty 100) IBM-AT. 546 

SOFTWARE NON-RE TURNABLE 

MINORITY HI-TECH INDUSTRIES 

5021 N. 20th Street, #10261 
Phoenix, Arizona 85064 

Other Information: (602) 890-0596 


★ WE BUY ★ 
SURPLUS GOODS 




Prices reflect 3-5% Cash Discount Shipping on most items 
$3 00 Prices and availability subiect to change without 
notice Send cashier's check or money order . All 
other checks delay shipping 2 weeks add #185 


1-2-3. Because each computer is produc¬ 
ing data that is eventually compiled into 
the same reports, it would be a great time- 
saver to have the systems all sharing a 
common hard disk containing the basic 
software as well as the data files. 

Does this type of data-file sharing re¬ 
quire an elaborate LAN (local-area net¬ 
work) setup? It seems that a simple multi¬ 
ple linking of the PCs to a large hard disk 
would serve our purpose nicely or are we 
greatly oversimplifying the problem? 

We are considering moving up to a true 
relational database-management system 
such as dBASE II (or III) or Condor but are 
still unsure that the file-sharing system we 
have in mind will work. 

Your advice on just how complicated (or 
simple) such a system could be would be 
greatly appreciated and would surely help 
us out of a real quandary. 

Charles Harper 
Dallas. TX 

Your situation appears to be one that 
does not require an LAN—yet! But you 
would probably be better off if you did 
plan for one. especially if you intend to 
move up to a true relational database 
system. Even your simple file sharing 
could cause some potentially disastrous 
problems without the safety net'' of true 
LAN software, lam referring to problems 
that occur when two individuals access 
the same file simultaneously. Under cer¬ 
tain conditions, it is quite probable that 
when two people write to the same file 
at nearly the same time, the resulting file 
will be incorrect from either’s point of 
view. Worse yet. a condition called "fatal 
embrace'' can essentially hang up the en¬ 
tire system until it is manually reset. 
Another point to remember is that not 
all software is ready for multiple users, 
although most LANs provide some 
mechanism to make it usable while avoid¬ 
ing the problems Tve mentioned. 

Two suppliers featuring LAN hardware 
and software are Corvus Systems and Or¬ 
chid Technology. Another possibility is to 
purchase an IBM PC AT and IBM 's net¬ 
working software (when it becomes 
available). 

Corvus can be reached at 800-4- 
CORVUS. Orchid Technology is located 
at 47790 Westinghouse Dr.. Fremont. CA 
94539. (415) 490-8586, -Steve 

Track Balls Are Better 


Dear Steve. 

1 use my Z-100 almost exclusively for 
word processing and other nonnumerical 


data-manipulation tasks. I find the number 
pad to the right of the keyboard useless 
except for the cursor-control keys, which 
I think are tedious and clumsy. 

What about this: replace the number 
pad with a track ball for cursor control. 
Or even better, an upside-down mouse (I 
never could understand why they had to 
run around on a tabletop—mine is always 
too cluttered) with one or two appropriate 
function buttons. 

Is this possible? Am I the only one who 
would use such a gizmo? Where can I go 
for information on how this might be 
done? 

Michael R. TViomas 
Port Arthur. TX 

Some people who use track balls and 
mice claim that they would never go back 
to using cursor-control keys again. That 
is why several companies are making 
these devices for micros. Your idea to in¬ 
corporate such a device into a keyboard 
is a good one. but it will have to be done 
by keyboard manufacturers. There is no 
easy or economical way to modify your 
Z-100 keyboard, due to the differing 
natures of keyboards and mice and their 
interaction with a particular program. A 
keyboard sends a unique code to the 
computer for each key as it is pressed. 
A mouse or track ball does not generate 
the same code when it is used, and the 
information it does generate usually 
enters the computer through a different 
port. 

Add-on mice are sold with utility soft¬ 
ware that translates the signals from the 
mouse into usable information. A word 
processor, for example, has been written 
to accept the control codes generated by 
certain keys (the cursor keys) and always 
expects those codes to come from the 
keyboard. Most current software is not 
written to take advantage of mice or 
track balls and would have to be 
modified to use these devices. Of course. 
Microsoft’s Word program was written 
specifically for a mouse. Other programs 
are appearing that also use mice — Steve 

Power-Line Pollution 


Dear Steve. 

I greatly appreciated your article ‘ Keep 
Power-Line Pollution Out of Your Com¬ 
puter” (December 1983. page 36). A near¬ 
by lightning flash once damaged a tran¬ 
sistor board in my RCA television. 

Tb protect my IBM PC. I am using the 
Radio Shack filter strip (cat. #26-1451). 

( continued) 


50 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 
















































































IMSI Presents PC Paintbruslt 


With PC Paintbrush, you’ll now be 
able to do things that you once only 
dreamed about. 

Because, like your dreams, you’ll be 
working with a palette of up to 256 
vibrant colors and shades, depend¬ 
ing on your color card. 

And, as you’ll notice, you’ll also have 
drawing tools, drop-down menus, and 
a range of brush widths and shapes. 
Plus your choice of mouse or joystick. 

In addition to freeform drawing, you’ll 
be able to draw precise triangles, 
rectangles, boxes, circles and ellipses. 

You’ll be able to cut, paste, and move 
things around. Even enhance graphs, 
text, and images from other programs 
like Lotus 1-2-3, Microsoft Word, 
and SuperCalc 3. 

But don’t stop with painting. 

PC Paintbrush also gives you an 
electronic type shop to work with. 
Several fonts, from Olde English to 
Computer. Each in seven styles 
'boldface, italics, underline, etc.) and 
Tven sizes. 


All of which makes it great for 
designing everything from fliers and 
report covers to greeting cards and 
birthday banners. (For a wall-sized 
work of art, just print sideways.) 

The possibilities are endless. But the 
best way to see for yourself is to see 
for yourself. Get a demonstration at 
your nearest computer store. 

Then, draw your own conclusions. 



INTERNATIONAL MICROCOMPUTER SOFTWARE. INC. 
633 Fifth Avenue • San Rafael. CA 94901 • 415/454-7101 


RUNS ON: IBM PC/compatibles, 
and Corona PC, 192K 
RAM. IBM PCjr., and 
Mindset, 256K RAM. 

HP 150, 320K RAM. 

All require DOS 2.0 and 
up and 1 drive. 

MICE: Summagraphics, Mouse 

Systems, Microsoft. 


JOYSTICKS: Any IBM compatible. 

GRAPHICS Amdek, Hercules, IBM, 
CARDS: PCjr., Quadram, Scion, 

Tecmar, STB, Paradise. 


MONITOR: 

OUTPUT: 


PC Paintbrush is a 


Color or black and white. 

Printers: IBM/Epson 
graphics, Epson FX-80 
and 100, MX 80 and 100, 
IDS Non-Color, IDS 
Prism Color, NEC 8023, 
C-ltoh 8510, Okidata 8X 
or 9X series, Radio 
Shack CGP-220, Xerox 
1770, PrintaColor 
TCI040, Quadram 
Quadjet, Transtar Color, 
Diablo Cl 50, Tektronix 
4695, HP Thinkjet, Star 
Micronics, Epson JX-80, 
Data Products 8050, 
IBM Color printer. 
Plotters: HP 7475A and 
7470A. 

registered trademark of ZSOFT CORP. 




FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 51 








































for the 






AZTEC C68K-C . $499 

commercial software development system 

• Full Version 7 ‘C’ Compiler • Fast and Compact 
Code • Linker (overlay) • Resource Editor • No 
Royalties • Source Editor • Compatible with AZTEC 
C for PC DOS, CP M-86, CP M-80, APPLE ,TRS- 
80. COMMODORE 64 • 68000 Macro Assembler • 
Extensive Run Time Support • Utilities • Shell Envi¬ 
ronment • Requires 128K MACINTOSH • Compati¬ 
ble with LISA MACWORKS and 512 MACINTOSH • 
Full access to MACINTOSH TOOLBOX (ROM & OS) 


AZTEC C68K-P ..... i 

personal software development system 

AZTEC cam TOOLS ......... g 

(make, grep, dif f, Z editor) 

mac cmm mhmim ——~ 

hosts & ihmkw . V 

LISA, PC DOS, MS DOS, 

CP M-80, APPLE //, VAX, 

pdp ii . mssA 


TO ORDER OR FOR INFORMATION 
CALL OR WRITE: 

MANX SOFTWARE SYSTEMS 
Box 55 

Shrewsbury. NJ 07701 
TX 4995812 

NJ RESIDENTS ADD 6S SAlES t AX 




CALL: 

800-221-0440 
201-780-4004 (NJ) 


■ A TRADEMARK 0- TANDY CORP MACl\ T OSH S A TRADEMARK OF APPlE 
/-SC A a E TRADEMARKS O c DIGITAL a ESEARCt- DCS iS A TRADEMARK C? 5V 


ASK BYTE 


Would you please answer the following 
questions? 

Is it necessary to connect my IBM PC 
Color Display Monitor to the 0.5-A moni¬ 
tor outlet on the filter, as recommended 
for Radio Shack monitors? 

My PC is connected to the 1.2 5-A pro¬ 
cessor outlet. Is this all right? 

I could not determine from your article 
where the MOVs are to be soldered on this 
unit. Could you tell me where they go? 

Is it advisable to remove disks from 
drives before turning the main power 
switch on? 

I also need your help on a different 
problem. We have often found that our 
telephone bills contain calls we did not 
make. The telephone company doesn't 
charge us for these calls, but this involves 
an examination of each bill and checking 
with Ma Bell to determine whether we 
made suspect calls. 

The computerized telephones being in¬ 
troduced are becoming more sophisti¬ 
cated, but none, as yet. keeps a record of 
outgoing calls. Is it possible to modify 
such a unit or to inexpensively build a 
device that would do this? 

I have one Tbuch-Tbne and two rotary- 
dial telephones, and I would like the new 
unit to be attached to one of them that 
would record outgoing calls on all three. 

Sidney Belman 
Teaneck. NJ 

The Radio Shack filter strip was origi¬ 
nally designed for the TRS-80 Model I 
computer, and the filters for each outlet 
were designed to handle different types 
of noise. The outlets have current limita¬ 
tions because the filters have current 
limitations. As long as the current ratings 
are not exceeded, any socket can be 
used. 

The IBM PC is rated at 200 Wat 120 V 
AC. This works out to 1.66 A, which is in 
excess of the 1.25-A rating of the filter. 

It is not necessary to remove disks from 
the drives before turning on the PC. It 
was a problem on the TRS-80 Model I, 
but the PC has an autoboot feature that 
allows the disk to be inserted prior to it 
being turned on. 

Recording outgoing telephone calls can 
be accomplished by a simple pulse- 
counter circuit connected to a computer. 
The computer would poll the line to see 
if a call were being made and then read 
and store the output of the pulse counter. 
A suitable pulse-counter circuit can be 
found in Telephone Accessories You Can 
Build by Jules H. Gilder (Hayden, 1976). 

( continued) 


52 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 194 











C COMPILERS FOR 

PC DOS MS DOS CP/M-86 CPM-80 APPLE II, lie, lie 
COMMODORE 64 RADIO SHACK and M ACINTO SH 

AZTEC C86 

Optimized “C" compiler for PC DOS, MS DOS & CP/M-86 
PC DOS, UNIX I/O, math, screen, graphics libraries 
8086 assembler, linker & librarian, overlays 
/PRO —library source, debug, ROM, MASM & RMAC, 8087, large model 



NEW C COMPILERS 

AZTEC C68K for MACINTOSH 
VAX cross compilers 

C TOOLS & AIDS 



AZTEC C II 


Optimized “C" compiler for CP/M, TRSDOS & LDOS 
assembler, linker & librarian, overlays, utilities 
UNIX I/O, math & compact libraries 
PRO —library source, ROM, M80& RMAC 



Z editor (like Vi), C TUTOR compiler, PHACT database, 
C GRAFX, UNI-TOOLS I, QUICK C, BABY BLUE for PC 
to CP/M cross, QUADLINK for PC to APPLE cross 


AZTEC C65 

“C” compiler for APPLE DOS 3.3, ProDOS or COMMODORE 64 
VED editor, SHELL, UNIX & math libraries 
/PRO —library source, ROM, overlays 


CROSS COMPILERS 

Compile & link on HOST — test on TARGET machine 
HOSTS: UNIX, PC DOS, CP/M-86, CP/M-80, VENIX, PCIX, APPLE 
TARGETS: PC DOS, CP/M-86, CP M-80, APPLE, RADIO SHACK, 
COMMODORE 64, other hosts and targets available 


PRICES 


ZTEC C86 C COMPILER 


AZTEC C II C COMPILER 


AZTEC C CROSS COMPILERS 

TARGETS 

PC DOS MSDOS 

249 

CP/M 

199 

PDP-11 HOST 

2000 

PC DOS 

CP/M-86 

249 

CII/PRO 

349 

PC DOS HOST 

750 

CP/M-86 

BOTH 

399 

/PRO UPGRADE 

150 

CP/M-86 HOST 

750 

CP/M-80 

C86/PRO 

499 

TRS 80 MODEL 3 

149 

CP/M-80 HOST 

750 

APPLE 

/PRO UPGRADE 

250 

TRS 80 MODEL 4 

199 

APPLE HOST 

750 

RADIO SHACK 

Z (VI EDITOR) 

125 

TRS 80 PRO (3 & 4) 

299 

VAX HOST 

CALL 

COMMODORE 64 

C TUTOR COMPILER 

99 



MACINTOSH 

CALL 

MACINTOSH 

PHACT DATABASE 

299 

AZTEC C65 C COMPILER 





C GRAFX 

99 

APPLE DOS 3.3 

199 




SUPERDRAW 

299 

PRODOS 

CALL 




UNI-TOOLS 1 

99 

E EDITOR 

99 




QUICK C 

125 



TRS 80 RADIO SHACK TRS DOS is a trademark of TANDY. 


MANX SOFTWARE SYSTEMS 
Box 55 

Shrewsbury, NJ 07701 
TELEX: 4995812 



APPLE DOS MACINTOSH is a trademark of APPLE. 

TO ORDER OR FOR INFORMATION: 

CALL: 800-221-0440 (outside NJ) 
201-780-4004 (NJ) 


Australia: Blue Sky Industries — 2A Blakesley St. — Chatswood NSW 2067 — Australia 61-2419-5579 
England: TAMSVS LTD — Pilgrim House — 2-6 William St. — Windsor, Berkshire SL4 1BA — England — Telephone Windsor 56747 
Shipping: per compiler next day USA $20. 2 days USA $6, 2 days worldwide $75, Canada $10, airmail outside USA & Canada $20 
UNIX is a trademark of Bell Labs. CP / M, CP M-80 and CP / M-86 are trademarks of DRI. PC DOS is a trademark of IBM. MS DOS is a trademark of MICROSOFT. 

N.J. residents add 6% sales tax. 


nquiry 195 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYT E 53 



















Achieve laboratory automa¬ 
tion at low cost— connect a 
DAISI™ (Data Acquisition and In¬ 
strument Systems Interface) to 
your Apple® II or lie Computer 

DAISI peripheral devices... 

■ Interface with Apple II and 
Apple lie Computers and their 
lookalikes 

■ Work with all popular language 
systems 

■ Come with cable, instructional 
diskette and comprehensive 
manual 


DAISI and Apple work together as 
a single system to measure, 
monitor, time, analyze, control and 
record a wide variety of research 
and testing functions. 

DAISI peripherals plug easily into 
any Apple expansion slot, ready 
to be used in chromatography, 
environmental data collection, 
evoked response, gas analysis, 
spectroscopy, signal processing, 
solar heating, mechanical mea¬ 
surement, structural testing, and 
many more functional applications. 

The AI13 analog-to-digital con¬ 
verter reads instruments and sen¬ 
sors and has its own external unit 
for easy cable access. 


DISCOVER NEW 
HORIZONS IN 

LlDDiLMY 

AND KEEP YOUR COSTS DOWN TO EARTH 


Here’s a rundown on the 
DAISI Peripherals: 

AI13 12-Bit Analog 

Input Interface.$550 

■ 16 input channels 

■ 20 microseconds conversion time 
DI09 Digital Interface 

with Timers.$330 

■ timing and interrupt capability 

■ direct connection to BCD digits, 
switches, relays 

AO03 8-Bit Analog 

Output Interface.$195-$437 

■ up to 8 independent channels 

■ range and offset adjustable 
AI02 8-Bit Analog 

Input Interface.$299 

■ 16 input channels 

■ 70 microseconds conversion time 

Plus the SC14 system for front- 
end signal conditioning and 
amplification, the UI16 isolation 
system for AC or DC power input 
or output, and more . .. 

is 

(Designed and manufactured in the USA) 


AND NOW . . . AMPRIS™ 

An easy add-on to Applesoft® 
BASIC. 

With AMPRIS you can: 

■ Read and store analog and 

digital inputs 

■ Send out analog and digital 

outputs 

■ Set, read and control the DI09 

counters 

■ Set, read and control the DI09 

shift registers 

■ Make full use of the DI09 inter¬ 

rupt capability 

Using AMPRIS is as easy as in¬ 
serting an ampersand (&) com¬ 
mand where you would normally 
insert an Applesoft command. For 
more information about the com¬ 
plete line of DAISI peripheral 
devices and the full spectrum of 
their applications, write or phone: 

Interactive Structures, Inc. 

146 Montgomery Avenue 
Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004 
Telephone: (215) 667-1713 


ASK BYTE 


A simpler circuit, not requiring a com- 
puter. would consist of a tape recorder 
to record the pulses. The tape could then 
be played back through the pulse 
counter to see what numbers were 
dialed. The tape recorder could be con¬ 
trolled by the pulse detector. Steve 

Computerized Home 


Dear Steve, 

I am planning to build a house and 
would like to provide for computer con¬ 
trol in my home. Can you offer any sug¬ 
gestions? 

Paul W. Marsh 
Urbana, 1L 

With the almost daily announcement 
of some computerized device, it makes 
sense to provide a means for installation 
in the home. However, it is difficult to 
know what devices will ultimately be 
required. 

I will be presenting a series of three ar¬ 
ticles, beginning in April, covering the 
construction of the Circuit Cellar home- 
control system.— Steve ■ 

Between Circuit Cellar Feedback, personal ques¬ 
tions. and Ask BYTE, I receive hundreds of letters 
each month. As you might have noticed, at the end 
of Ask BYTE 1 have listed my own paid staff. We 
answer many more letters than you see published, 
and it often takes a lot of research. 

If you would like to share the knowledge you have 
on microcomputer hardware with other BYTE 
readers, joining the Circuit Cellar/Ask BYTE staff 
would give you the opportunity. We!re looking for 
additional researchers to answer letters and gather 
Circuit Cellar project material. 

If you’re interested, let us hear from you. Send 
a short letter describing your areas of interest and 
qualifications to Steve Ciarcia. POB 582, Glaston¬ 
bury. CT 06033. 


IN ASK BYTE. Steve Ciarcia answers questions 
on any area of microcomputing. The most rep¬ 
resentative questions received each month will be 
answered and published. Do you have a nag¬ 
ging problem ? Send your inquiry to 
Ask BYTE 
do Steve Ciarcia 
POB 582 

Glastonbury. CT 06033 
Due to the high volume of inquiries, personal 
replies cannot be given. All letters and photo¬ 
graphs become the property of Steve Ciarcia and 
cannot be returned. Be sure to include "Ask 
BYTE" in the address. 

The Ask BYTE staff includes manager H arv 
Weiner and researchers Bill Curlew, Larry 
Bregoli. Dick Sawyer, and Jeannette Dojan. 


54 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 151 













12-BIT A-D-A CONVERTER 
BOARO 

8 Channel A-D: 12 microsec. Conversion, 
50KHz Sample Rate, Programmable 
Gains, Offset and Diff./Single Modes. 

8 Channel D-A: 2 microsec. Settling, 
Bipolar V or Unipolar I Output. Program¬ 
mable Reference levels, Dual-Ported Chan¬ 
nel Refresh RAM. 16/B-Blt Data 
Transfers via I/O or Memory Mapped 
AST, P/N 5S748-900-101 ,—. 


DUAL QPIB-4BB INTERFACE 
BOARO 

A Stand-Alone, Independently Controlled 
Dual Channel IEEE-4BB I/O Processor. In¬ 
terface Activity Modes for Controller-in- 
Charge. Controller Assigned or Terminal 
Bus Slave, and all Interface Functions are 
handled transparent to Host System CPU 
through an on-board CPU and DMA con¬ 
troller User Friendly operation. 

A&T, P/N 58748-800-108 


PERIPHERAL SUPPORT 
BOARD 

Two Serial SYNC/ASYNC Ports with 
RS-232, TTL or Current Loop Outputs, 
three B-Bit Parallel Ports, three Timers, 
Real Time Clock/Calendar and Response 
Programmable Interrupt Controller. Small 
Proto Area with +5 and ±12v. 

A&T, P/N 58748-150-101 




BAR CODE PROCESSOR BOARD 

The BarTender is e stand-alone I/O Pro¬ 
cessor that reeds end prints most common 
Bar Codes. Includes bi-directional reading, 
wand interface, clock/calendar with battery. 
Extensive documentation and software. 
AST,58748-500-101 Without Wand 
AST, BB748-S00-801 With Wand 


MULTI-PURPOSE 
PROTOTYPING KIT 

Industrial Quality with Plated-Thru holes for 
Wire-Wrap or Solder projects. Complete 
with + 5, ± 12v Regulators, Bus Bar, Filter 
Capacitors, and Manual. 

P/N 58748-450 Inquiry 148 


ROB COLOR GRAPHICS BOARD 

Programmable resolution up to 512 x 512 
pixels with 4 local video planes and on-board 
graphics processor. Color mapper allows IB 
colors from a palette of 4096. Light pen 
input. Plus more ... 

AST, P/N 58748-300-101 


ALSO AVAILABLE: MULTI-FUNCtlON I/O BOARD, SMART PROTOTYPING KIT, 1S8Kx8/64Kx16 STATIC RAM MODULE 


SPECIFICATIONS SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE. 







































A LOCKED DOORADEAD MAN 



















AND NOW FOR SOMETHING 
INCOMPLETELY DIFFERENT! 


Incomplete, yes. 

But it’s not just because 
we’re always bringing 
out new stories in the 
Infocom interactive fic¬ 
tion collection. Nor is it 
simply due to the fact 
that with all the writing 
and re-writing, honing 
and perfecting that we 
put into every one of 
our stories, our work is 
seemingly never done. 

The real reason is: an 
Infocom work of fiction 
can never be complete until you 
become a part of it. 






In CUTTHROATS,™ the plot 
involves a motley band of 
hardbitten salts who get wind 
of a shipwreck laden with 
sunken treasure near the 
remote island where you live. 
In exchange for your diving 
skills, they offer you a piece 
of the action. Your challenge: 
survive them, the perils of 
the deep, and escape with 
the treasure and your life. 
Good luck! 


THE HITCHHIKER’S 
GUIDE TO THE GALAXY™ 
by Douglas Adams is the 
most mind-boggling story 
we’ve ever published. In the 
person of Arthur Dent, you’ll 
chortle as your planet is 
demolished. You’ll yelp with 
laughter as your life is 
threatened by a galaxy of 
horrors. Your sides will 
positively split as you search 
the universe for... well, 
you’ll find out. Maybe. 


In SUSPECT™ our newest 
mystery thriller, you’re a 
reporter who gets the scoop 
on the society event of the 
year—the murder of a 
Maryland Blue Blood at a 
fancy costume ball. Great! 
Except you’re the prime 
suspect. And if you can’t 
find the real killer, your 
next by-line could be in the 
obituaries. 


with surprising twists, unique 
characters (many of whom 

You see, as hard as we work at possess extraordinarily developed 
perfecting our stories, we always personalities), and original, logical, Infocom. Because with Infocom’s 

often hilarious puzzles. Communi- interactive fiction, there’s room 


you have hundreds, even 
thousands of alternatives 
at every step. In fact, an 
Infocom interactive story 
is roughly the length of 
a short novel in content, 
but because you’re 
actively engaged in the 
plot, your adventure 
can last for weeks and 
months. 

In other words, only 
you can complete the 
works of Infocom, Inc. 
Because they’re stories 
that grow out of your imagination. 

Find out what it’s like to get 
inside a story. Get one from 


leave out one essential element— 
the main character. And that’s 
where you enter in. 

Once you’ve got Infocom’s 
interactive fiction in your 
computer, you experience 
something akin to waking up 
inside a novel. You find yourself 
at the center of an exciting plot 
that continually challenges you 


cation is carried on in the same 
way as it is in a novel—in prose. 
And interaction is easy-you type 
in full English sentences. 

But there is this key differ¬ 
ence between our tales and 
conventional novels: Infocom’s 
interactive fiction is active, not 
passive. The course of events is 
shaped by the actions you choose 
to take. And you enjoy enormous 
freedom in your choice of actions- 


for you on every disk. 

inrocom 

Infocom, Inc., 55 Wheeler Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 

For your: Apple II, Atari, Commodore 64, CP/M8", DECmate, 
DEC Rainbow, DEC RT-1I, IBM PC* and PCjr, KAYPRO II, 
MS-DOS 2.0,* NEC APC, NEC PC-8000, Osborne, Tandy 2000, 
TI Professional, TI99/4A, TRS-80 Models I and III. 

*Use the IBM PC version for your Compaq, and the MS-DOS 2.0 
version for your Wang or Mindset. 

CUTTHROATS and SUSPECT are trademarks of Infocom, Inc. 
THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY is a trademark 
of Douglas Adams. 


nquiry 145 


FEBRUARY 1985 • B Y T E 57 

















Master Piece 
puts the power at 
your fingertips. 


Master Piece is the most versatile 
accessory ever made for IBM Per¬ 
sonal Computers Master Piece 
combines the four most popular 
IBM® accessories into one elegant 
accessory offering the most con¬ 
venience and best value available. 

A SWIVEL BASE 

The Master Piece has a swivel so 
you can adjust the viewing angle of 
your monitor with just the touch of 
a finger Since the Master Piece 
swivels with your monitor, its 
switches and static control are in 
front of you at all times 



FIVE SWITCHED OUTLETS 

Stop searching for outlets to plug 
in your peripherals. Master Piece’s 
five outlets put your entire system 
at your fingertips. Power up with 
the "Master” switch, then use the 
individual switches to control your 
peripherals. Touch the "Master” 
switch to shut down and you'll 
never accidentally leave your pe¬ 
ripherals running overnight 

SURGE SUPPRESSION 
CIRCUITRY 

Power surges, spikes and line noise 
are responsible for 70-90% of all 
PC malfunctions. They can wipe out 
memory in your PC, taking hours of 
hard work with them. They can zap 
your delicate chips, sending your 
PC in for costly repairs Master 
Piece clips surges and spikes at a 
safe level You end up with an IBM 
that's more accurate and reliable 

STATIC PROTECTION 

Even you are a threat to your IBM 
During the day you build up static 
charges—as much a threat to your 
PC as surges and spikes. Master 
Piece offers an elegant alternative 
to expensive and unsightly static 
mats. lust touch its nameplate be¬ 
fore you begin work and static 
charges are grounded 

If you bought these accessories 
separately, you could spend more 
than $200 Master Piece's recom¬ 
mended retail price is under $150 
Available now from IBM dealers 
everywhere. 


Inquiry 169 



KENSINGTON “ 
MICROWARE 


251 Park Avenue South 

New York. NY 10010 

(212) 475-5200 Telex 467383 KML NY 


Trademarks Master Piece/Kensington Microware Ltd 
IBM/lnternational Business Machines 
<© 1984 Kensington Microware Ltd 


























CLUBS & N EWSLETTERS 


• VISIT WITH APPLE 
USERS—Ideas, information, 
and the latest computer 
news are available to 
members of the Arkon Info- 
system, a 24-hour 300-bps 
bulletin-board system 
operating in Toronto, 

Canada. Upload, download, 
electronic mail, and public 
messages are a few of its 
features. Also included are 
20 conferences, 10 mega¬ 
bytes of storage, and on-line 
help. The annual fee for 
using the system is $19.95, 
but inquirers can log on 
under the “Guest" user 
function. Questions about 
the system can be sent 
through the (F)eedback-to- 
sysop function of the Arkon 
Infosystem at (416) 593- 
7460. Other details are 
available from David 
Fingold, Arkon Infosystem, 
409 Queen St. W, Tbronto, 
Ontario M5V 2A5, Canada. 
(416) 593-9653. 

• CHAMELEON ADVOCATE 
The National Chameleon 
Users Group (NACHUG) pro¬ 
duces a newsletter, The 
80/88 National Newsletter , that 
contains hardware and soft¬ 
ware reviews, updates, and a 
users forum. Member dis¬ 
counts are provided on pe¬ 
ripherals and accessories. 
Membership is $12 a year. 
Contact Steven Bender, 
NACHUG. POB 28360, 
Queens Village, NY 11428. 

• SIG, NEWS FOR PUBLIC- 
DOMAIN SOFTWARE 

PC-SIG News, a newsletter 
from the PC Software In¬ 
terest Group (PC-SIG), is 
devoted to public-domain or 
user-supported software for 
the IBM PC and compatible 
computers. It lists the disks 
in the library, updates recent 


disk arrivals, and encourages 
patches and feedback from 
users. The members have 
compiled a directory with a 
subject index and listings. 
Contact the PC Software In¬ 
terest Group, Suite 130, 

1556 Halford Ave.. Santa 
Clara. CA 95051. 

• C-CLUB IN RIVER CITY 

The River City Commodore 
Club is a nonprofit organiza¬ 
tion that meets twice a 
month to promote interest 
in all Commodore com¬ 
puters. The group features a 
large club library, help 
groups, and basic and ad¬ 
vanced tutorials. For details, 
write River City Commodore 
Club. POB 4298, North Little 
Rock. AR 72116. 

• COMPUTER AND SOFT¬ 
WARE LAW-The Center for 
Computer/Law. a nonprofit 
educational institution, pro¬ 
vides research and educa¬ 
tional services in computer 
law. The Center produces 
Computer/Law Journal, an inter¬ 
national journal on the legal 
issues of computers, tele¬ 
communications. and the in¬ 
formation industries. It also 
publishes a quarterly law 
review, Software Jjxw Journal. 
that contains scholarly ar¬ 
ticles from computer law ex¬ 
perts, as well as a bibliog¬ 
raphy of software law and a 
directory of recent cases. 
Contact the Center for Com¬ 
puter/Law, POB 3 549, Man¬ 
hattan Beach, CA 90266. 


• MANY SHARED 
BENEFITS-The First 
Attache/2001 User Group 
(FAUG) produces a monthly 
newsletter titled Where It's 
Att. Members meet quarter¬ 
ly, have access to public- 
domain library disks, and 
receive support by tele¬ 
phone and networking. The 
club can be reached on 
CompuServe at 70346,63. 
Annual dues are $3 5. Con¬ 
tact Charles Raisch. FAUG, 
1827 Haight, San Francisco. 
CA 94117-2791, (415) 
221-3415. 

• NO TIME LIMITS SET 
YET—In northern Idaho a 
24-hour bulletin-board 
system called I-PACE fea¬ 
tures Atari downloads. Pass¬ 
words are not required, no 
time limits are set. and peo¬ 
ple add to it frequently. The 
BBS number is (208) 
772-9421. Contact Robert 
Marshall, POB 5123, Coeur 
D'Alene, ID 83814. (208) 
772-5922. 

• CHRISTIAN COM- 
PUTERISTS—Christian pro¬ 
grams, a member's ex¬ 
change. a monthly newslet¬ 
ter, and discounts on com¬ 
puter supplies are available 
from the Elect Christian 
Computer Club. For details 
and a free issue of the 
newsletter. E 3 C E lectletter. 
write to the Elect Christian 
Computer Club, Department 
LAI, POB 31022, Chicago, IL 
60631-0022. 


CLUBS & NEWSLETTERS is a forum for letting BYTE readers know what 
is happening in the microcomputing community. Emphasis is given to elec - 
tronic bulletin-board services, club-sponsored classes, community-help projects, 
field trips, and other activities outside of routine meetings. Of course, we will 
continue to list new clubs, their addresses and contact persons, and other in¬ 
formation of interest. To list events on schedule, we must receive your infor¬ 
mation at least four months in advance. Send information to BYTE. Clubs 
& Newsletters. POB 372, Hancock. NH 03449. 


• TRIANGLE dBASE USERS 
GROUP—Members of a 
users group for dBASE II 
and III meet at 7:30 p.m. on 
the second Wednesday of 
each month in the Dreyfus 
Auditorium of the Research 
TYiangle Institute in Research 
TYiangle Park, North Caro¬ 
lina. A bimonthly newsletter 
is available on CompuServe 
(70156,404), and a public- 
domain library of applica¬ 
tion disks is planned. An¬ 
nual dues are $10. Send a 
self-addressed, stamped 
envelope for a sample news¬ 
letter to Rich Slatta, TYiangle 
dBASE Users Group. 2618 
Davis St., Raleigh. NC 
27608, (919) 782-8926. 

• NEWSLETTER WITH 
FOCUS—Users of Lotus 
1-2-3 and Symphony can 
focus on applications with 
Jjearn Mode, a monthly 
newsletter from Systems 
Consulting. Among its fea¬ 
tures are book reviews, solu¬ 
tions to problems, questions 
and answers, and updates 
on Lotus products. Article 
contributions are welcome. 

L earn Mode is $30 for 12 
issues. Request a com¬ 
plimentary copy of the first 
issue from Systems Con¬ 
sulting, POB 982, Palo Alto, 
CA 94302, (415) 326-8605. 

• FRIENDLY USERS 

Business computer users in 
the Chicago metropolitan 
area form the Tkndy Busi¬ 
ness Users Group, which 
meets on the third Wednes¬ 
day of each month. The 
monthly newsletter, T-BUG, 
contains a schedule of com¬ 
ing events, workshops, and 
forums, profiles, meeting 
notes, news releases, and 
product announcements. An- 
(i continued ) 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYT E 59 







CLUBS & NEWSLETTERS 


O 



GET SERIOUS. STOP PAYING HIGH PRICES NOW! 

THOUSANDS OF AVAILABLE HEMS. CALL FOR COMPLETE PRICING. 

SYSTEMS 


IBM PC 

256K, Two 360KB Disk Drives. Color 
Graphics/Monochrome Graphics board. 
Parallel Printer Port. Monochrome Display 
(Amber/Green). DOS 2.1. 

LIST PRICE $2950.00 — ONLY $2095.00 


SOPER XT 10 Meg Upgrade ... $2795.00 
IBM AT . 11% OFF 

IBM SOFTWARE 

LOTOS 1-2-3. $295.00 

LOTOS Symphony. 449.99 

MICROPRO Wordstar. 249.00 

ASCII Express For IBM. 125.00 

Wordstar Professional. 359.00 

Infostar. 249.00 

Multimate. 269.00 

MICROSOFT Word. 229.00 

WordW/Mouse. 279.00 

Multiplan. 139.00 

Project. 159.00 

ASHTON TATE Friday. 179.00 

dBASEII . 280.00 

dBASE III. 349.00 

Framework. 359.00 

LIFETREE SOFTWARE Volkswriter 119.00 

Volkswriter Deluxe. 169.00 

FOX & GELLER Quickcode. 139.00 

dUtil. 59.00 

dGraph . 149.00 

MICRORIM Rbase 4000 . 295.00 

PFS Write. 89.00 

File. 89.00 

Report. 89.00 

Proof. 79.00 

Access. 79.00 

ENERGRAPHICS 269.00 

NORTON UTILITIES 59.00 

IBM HARDWARE 

AST Six Pack Plus 64K. 259.00 

MegaPlus D .'. 259.00 

PC Net 1 Starter Kh. 830.00 

QUADRAM Quadboard 0-K. 219.00 

Quadcolor I or Microfazer 64K .... 205.00 

Quadlink. 479.00 

MICROSCIENCE 

10MB Winchester. 799.00 

HERCULES Mono Graphics. 329.00 

Color Card. 199.00 

PLANTRONICS Colorplus. 389.00 

STB Rio plus 64K. 249.00 

Super Rio. 259.00 

Graphix +11 NEW. 309.00 

TEAC 55B. 124.00 

55F. 180.00 

TANDON TM100-2. 179.00 

IBM Floppy 1.2 Meg . CALL 

TALL GRASS 12MB W/Tape . 2799.00 

RAM 64K upgrade. 35.00 

RAM 256K upgrade. 26.00 

MOUSE SYSTEMS Optical Mouse .189 
ALSO XCOMP, PERSYST. ORCHID. 
TITAN AND OTHERS 

PRINTERS LETTER QUALITY 

BROTHER HR-15 . 375.00 

HR-25 . 629.00 

HR-35 . 859.00 

JUKI 6100. 429.00 

NEC 2030 . 659.00 

2050 . 799.00 

3530 . 1229.00 

3550 . 1539.00 


PRINTERS DOT MATRIX 

STAR MICRONICS Gemini 10X . 259.00 


Gemini 15X. 389.00 

EPSON RX-80 F/T. 329.00 

FX-80. 349.00 

FX-100 . 649.00 

LQ1500. 1299.00 

OKIDATA 92A 389.00 

93A. 649.00 

R4A 949 00 

Panasonic io9i!!’.!!!!!!!!!!!. call 

TOSHIBA 1350-P 1399.00 

MONITORS 

AMDEK 300. 129.00 

30QA. 145.00 

310A. 169.00 

Color 1+. 269.00 

Color U. 459.00 

TAXAN Composite Amber . 119.00 

121/122 . 149.00 

420 (RGB). 439.00 

415 (RGB). 489.00 

PRINCETON GRAPHICS HX 12 . 469.00 

SR-12. 625.00 

MAX-12. 189.00 

ZENITH ZVM-122 Amber. 95.00 

ZVM-123 Green . 95.00 

NEC 1201 Hi Res Green. 125.00 

1205 Hi Res Amber. 125.00 

1206 Green. 85.00 

JC1215 Composite Color w/audio 215.00 
JC1216 Color RGB. 334.00 

MODEMS 

HAYES 1200. 469.00 

1200B. 389.00 

300 . 199.00 

Micromodem //e. 219.00 

ANCHOR Mark X 109.00 

Mark XII. 249.00 

Volksmodem . 59.00 

NOVATION Smart Cat Plus. CALL 

Access 1-2-3. 419.00 

Apple Cat D. 239.00 

J-Cat. 99.00 

U S. ROBOTICS PC Modem 365.00 

Password. 349.00 

PROMETHEUS Promodem 1200.. 329.00 

APPLE PRODUCTS 

MICRO SCI AZ drives . 179.00 

RANA ELITE 1. 219.00 

TEAC drive. 189.00 

APPLE Compatible drive. 169.00 

WESPER Interface . 69.00 

BUFFERED 16K. 139.00 

SYSTEM SAVER Fan. 69.00 

MICROSOFT Premium //e. 279.00 

Softcard CP/M . 29.00 

Multiplan. 129.00 

MAC Multiplan (Macintosh) . 129.00 

Basic (Macintosh). 109.00 

APRICORN Serial Card. 69.00 

Z-80 Card. 59.00 

ASCII Express Professional. 89.00 

MAXELL S/S . 19.00 

D/S. 27.00 

KOALA Touch Tablet. 79.00 

HAYES Mach m Joystick. 39.00 

THUNDERCLOCK 119.00 

MOCKINGBOARD CALL 

APPLEMOUSE H 129.00 

VIDEX Ultraterm. 179.00 

80 COLUMN/64K Interface //e only 99.00 
80 COLUMN Card D+ only . 59.00 


WE SUPPORT THESE FINE SYSTEMS: 


nual dues are $3 5 and in¬ 
clude a one-year subscrip¬ 
tion to the newletter. For an 
application and further 
details, write Carlos Hidalgo. 
T-BUG. 311 Longview Rd.. 
Waukegan, IL 60087, (312) 
623-9661. 

• EXCHANGE ATARI NEWS 

The Atari Computer Club of 
the Palm Beaches produces 
a monthly newsletter. The 
Pokey Press, that features club 
news, pen pals, participating 
businesses, news from 
shows, and software and 
product reviews, and 
welcomes the exchange of 
newsletters with other Atari 
groups. Contact lim Wood¬ 
ward, Atari Computer Club 
of the Palm Beaches. Apt. 
B-101, 15993 Southwest 8th 
Ave., Delray Beach, FL 
33444. 

• SPECIALIZED NEWS FOR 
ACADEME—Theories in the 
field of word processing are 
addressed in Research in Word 
Processing Newsletter, a nine- 
month publication from the 
Liberal Arts Department of 
the South Dakota School of 
Mines and Technology. It 
functions as a clearinghouse 
of information relevant to 
computer-based writing in¬ 
struction at all educational 
levels and contains original 
research, article abstracts, 
bibliographies, and software 
evaluations. Article submis¬ 
sions are welcome. Contact 
The Editors, Research in Word 
Processing Newsletter, Liberal 
Arts Department, South 
Dakota School of Mines and 
Technology, Rapid City, SD 
57701-3995. 

• FOR NEW VENTURES 

A monthly newsletter, 

C ompu-Venture. contains soft¬ 
ware reviews and informa¬ 
tion on how to make money 
using your microcomputer. 
Subscriptions are $20 a 
year. Contact Microcomputer 
Software & Consultants. POB 
1039, Mount Vernon, NY 
10550. 


Apple, Compag, IBM, Sanyo many 


TELEX #550757/ANSWER BACK—COMPUTERBANK UD 

Orders Only 
™ $$ 800/332-BANC 

OUTSIDE CALIFORNIA 

COMPUTERBANC 

16783 Beach BhrtL, Huntington Beach, CA 92647 
714/841-6160 Inquiry 70 

AD products arr in (aciory sealed packages We guarantee aD items for 30 days Within thus period defective merchandise returns must be 
accompanied by RMA number All other returns wiD be subject to a 10* restockmgfee For prepaid orders there wdl be a 3* shipping charge 
5* for UPS Blue Label. S5 00 minimum. aD orders outside 0 SA at 1 S% shipping There wiD be an additional V4 00 surcharge on COD orders 
Cash or Cashiers check is required on CO D orders California residents add 6* sales tax Prices subject to change without nooce 

• Copyright 1964 COMPUTERBANC AD Rights Reserved 



• MORE FOR ENCORE 

Encore 100 and 200. two 
software-based portable net¬ 
work analyzers that are 
designed for data-communi- 
cations monitoring, diag¬ 
nostics. and emulations, now 
have a users group spon¬ 
sored by its manufacturer, 
Digitech Industries. A 
newsletter, Encore Com¬ 
municator. serves to solve 
user problems or print user 
programs. Application engi¬ 
neers answer hardware and 
software questions and 
supply needed information. 
Tb receive a business-reply 
registration form, contact 
joseph Luciano. Digitech In¬ 
dustries Inc., 66 Grove St.. 
POB 547. Ridgefield. CT 
06877, (203) 438-3731. 

• COMMODORE IN SILVER 

The Silver State Commodore 
Users Group of Las Vegas, 
Nevada, meets at 7:30 p.m. 
Wednesday nights at the 
local YMCA. The $4 per 
month dues entitle members 
to vote and to copy any of 
35 public-domain programs. 
Though most members use 
Commodores, the group is 
not limited to a particular 
computer. The club offers 
ongoing classes in BASIC, 
program demonstrations, 
and assistance. Contact 
Karen Douglas. Silver State 
Commodore Users Group. 
POB 81075. Las Vegas. NV 
89180. 

• FOR THE FORTUNE 

Users of the multiuser 
Fortune 32:16 can join 
/u/fortune, a group that 
meets in Cambridge. Massa¬ 
chusetts. on the first 
Thursday of each month. 
Meetings include presenta¬ 
tions of new software, small 
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josh Lobel or Mark 
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28. 20A Prescott St., Cam¬ 
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When all else 

fails. 


Most diskettes are pretty good. 

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Inquiry 98 


Dysan is a registered trademark of Dysan Corporation '§) 1984. Dysan Corporation 


Dysan 



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Sooner or 
later, you’ll have 

to face 

this computer 
problem. 

<0^^- ' DoV ouge> 

SSS^L 

tribute to S en 


Better sooner 


Better Sooner. 

Computers don't ever get 
headaches. 

But the people who use 
computers do. 

Quite clearly, as PC Magazine 
spells out, that's not the only 
trouble they're having. 

In case you're tempted to dis¬ 
miss this as trivial, there are two 
things you should be aware of: 

First, more than twenty states 
are already preparing legislation 
to force some improvements. 

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suffer, so does business. 

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fast and accurate as the people 
who operate them. 

You are not a machine. 

Computers are designed by 
engineers. 

They usually know a lot about 
technology but very little about 
people. 

Which is why so many com¬ 
puters are technically impressive 
but strangely unnatural to use. 

Ericsson, in 
its very Swedish 
way, has al¬ 
ways believed 
that excellent er¬ 
gonomic design 
isn't a privilege. 
It's a right. 
That it isn't 
a noble ges¬ 
ture but demon¬ 
strably good for business. 

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The Ericsson P C. 

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Ericsson has spent $300 mil¬ 
lion finding ways to make 
people and computers work better 
together. 

Here are some of the results. 

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Aspirin gets rid of a headache. 
Ergonomics gets rid of the cause. 

The Ericsson PC monitor has 
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like O and Q. 

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Ergo-Arm.™ 

^^^^^^and muscle pain 

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Ergo-Color.™ 

Even the color of the case is 
ergonomically selected to be rest¬ 
ful to the eye over many hours. 


I Ergo-Space.™ 

The system unit is one- 
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The Ericsson PC boasts the 
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You can take advantage of 
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Call toll-free 1-800-FOR-ERGO. 



Computer-induced 
problems (%) 

Eye strain 55% 

Back pain 43% 

Headaches 30% 

Shoulder 25% 

Hand/wrist 18% 

Neck pain 15% 

(Source: “Ergonomic 
Principles in Office 
Automation" Pub. 
1983 by E.I.S. AB, 
Sweden.) 


IBM is a trademark, of International Business Machines Corp. 


Inquiry 108 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYT E 63 
















@Sanyo 555-2’s 
IMow 51 Dollars Less 

For months o competitor hos been selling Sonyo 555-2 s for o bit less fhon Scottsdole 
Systems no more Of course we still include more free sofrwore like Cl) Sketch (2) 15 Gomes 
(3) Doremote (4) Diognosrics ond Utilities. (5) P C. Filer ond (6)1.5 Monoger And now we hove 
rhe best price for the 555-2 os well os the other models. 

Plus if you mention this od when you buy your Sonyo from Scottsdole you con buy on RS-232 
port or on extro 128K of RAM ot the some time for o mere $69 

To poraphrose Bogey if you don r buy your Sonyo from Scottsdole Systems you II regret it: 
moybe not today moybe not tomorrow but soon ond for rhe rest of your life 

Ask obout our open access package 




Columbia’s 

If you re looking for moximum compotibiliry 
minimum prices notionwide service you I 
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mcluding the new 1600 IV Plus or VP Plus 
with 256K keyboord ond video cord for 


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360k drives 12 green phospher monitor 60 
column/25 line disploy plus over $2000 of 
the best-selling Micropro software including 
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If you didn't think your 

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ColorFox . $1688 


TERMINALS 



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Also great prices on other Ampex ond 
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PLOTTERS 

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MODEMS 

Password.$308 

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Compatible Drives 
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FD54A (160K) $69 

FD55D (360K).$139 

FD55F (720K).$159 


Altos Systems ... big discounts, local installation 


\ / 

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™ ( 602 ) 941-5656 

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PRINTERS 


X 


We participate in arbitration for business ond customers through the Better 
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SINCE 1980 

^TELEMARKETING ONLY: If you plan to visit please coll first for on appointment^ 
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Viso, Mastercard odd 3%. Az. residents odd 6%. Prices subject to change, 
product subject to availability. Personol/compony checks take 3 weeks to clear. I 
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Televideo Systems. Inc.: Silver Fox™. HAGEN-DOS-Scottsdale Systems. Ltd.; J 
iCommuter-Visuol Computer Incorporated. . 


Epson FX-80* . . ^*A«=$l80off 
Epson RX-80FT . 5***$ 100 off 

Tolly Spirit 80 .$254 

Okidoto 92 • $125 off 

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Okidoto 84. Coll 

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Panasonic 1091 .$298 

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Juki 6100.$398 

Juki 6300 .$719 

Silver Reed 400 .$249 

Silver Reed 500 .$299 

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NEC's. Coll 

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DIABLO LQ SALE 


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Diablo 630 API $1499 

Diablo 620 $715 


Gemini 10X 
Power Type 
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$244 

$299 

$589 


64 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 



















































BOOK REVIEWS 



ALAN TURING: 

THE ENIGMA 
Andrew Hodges 
Simon & Schuster 
New York: 1983 
600 pages, $24.95 

COMPUTER GRAPHICS 

PROGRAMMING 

Gunter Enderle, Klaus 

Kansy, and Gunther Pfaff 

Springer-Verlag 

New York: 1984 

560 pages. $39 

DATA STRUCTURES AND 
PROGRAM DESIGN 
Robert L. Kruse 
Prentice-Hall 

Englewood Cliffs. NJ: 1984 
486 pages. $29.95 


ALAN TURING: 

THE ENIGMA 
Reviewed by 
G. Michael Vose 

A nd thus it was that... 

thinking in his spare 
time, an English homo¬ 
sexual atheist mathematician ... conceived of the com¬ 
puter." This startling claim is at the heart of the first ma¬ 
jor biography of Alan Mathison Hiring (1912-1954), a man 
whose legacies include the Hiring machine and the Hiring 
test. Andrew Hodges has uncovered the genius of this 
complicated man and recorded the evolution of his ideas 
within the unique context of the tumultuous times in which 
he lived. Hodges's fascinating study adds new informa¬ 
tion to the history of computer science, counters its all- 
American bias, and claims a rightful place for the eccen¬ 
tric Alan Hiring. 

Revising history is a risky endeavor. The task demands 
rigorous scholarship and the courage to successfully 
challenge the assumptions of the past. Hodges's Alan 
Hiring: The Enigma brims with painstaking research and em¬ 
phatic interpretation. No less an authority than the N ew 


York Times (December 4. 
1983, section 7, page 80) 
has labeled this volume a 
work of major literary 
importance. 

This praise derives from 
the wealth of ideas ex¬ 
posed and illuminated in 
the book, from lucid discus¬ 
sions of complex mathe¬ 
matics to revelations about 
the secret cryptography 
work accomplished by Hir¬ 
ing and others during World 
War II. Through this work, 
the fortunes of war con¬ 
tributed significantly to the 
creation of the British 
computer. 

In Bletchley Park, a 
London suburb, the cryp¬ 
tography group worked to 
decipher codes generated 
by the German army's 
Enigma machine. While 
Hiring's inventiveness was 
instrumental in breaking 
these codes, his life was full 
of naive contradictions, 
similar in nature to the 
Nazis' refusal to believe 
that the codes of their 
cipher machine could ever be broken. 

Hodges is sympathetic to the idea that the Allied vic¬ 
tory in WW11 hinged on the battle in the Atlantic in which 
Hitler's U-boats tried to isolate Britain by cutting off her 
sea supply routes to the West. Here, the breaking of the 
Enigma codes made the difference between victory and 
defeat because deciphering German naval messages 
helped transatlantic convoys avoid the U-boat wolfpacks. 
But it is Hodges's contention that Hiring came up with the 
major formulations of modern computer science that 
makes this biography so significant. 

Of course, the Universal machine (now known as the Tur¬ 
ing machine) that Hiring conceived in 1935 and described 
in a 1936 paper called "On Computable Numbers, with 
an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem" has rightful- 

( continued ) 


ILLUSTRATED BY IVAN POWELL 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 65 

















Inquiry 358 


BOOK REVIEWS 


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IBM is a trademark of I B M. Corp. 


ly taken its place as a seminal computer science idea. It 
was central to Hiring's lifelong inquiry into the idea that 
machines could be intelligent. However, his later, little- 
publicized ideas about how computing machines might 
work form the bulk of the biographer's most interesting 
revisions to the historical record. 

During his Enigma-deciphering work, Hiring designed 
and helped construct a machine called the Bombe, an 
electromechanical device that calculated the permutations 
of the Enigma’s enciphering rotors. It used relays as 
switches and was a specialized, high-speed calculating 
machine. Hiring's work on the Bombe enabled others in 
the Bletchley Park group to develop the Colossus, the 
machine that some historians consider the first computer. 
The Colossus began service in December of 1943, but Tur¬ 
ing played no part in its design or construction. In con¬ 
ceiving and building the Bombe, however, and later 
machines like the Delilah (a telephone-voice enciphering 
device). Hiring began fermenting the ideas that he would 
later develop to construct a version of his Universal 
machine. 

The distillation of these ideas appeared in "Proposed 
Electronic Calculator,'' a late-1945 report prepared in con¬ 
junction with his new responsibilities as senior scientific 
officer with the Mathematics Division of the National 
Physical Laboratory (NPL) in Bushy Park, Tbddington. In 
this report, Hiring laid out plans to construct a machine 
later named the ACE (automatic computing engine), a proj¬ 
ect in response to the American scientific community's 
efforts to build a digital computing machine. The plan 
outlined the construction of a true automatic electronic 
digital computer with internal program storage , a fully devel¬ 
oped scheme broader in scope than those conceived by 
John von Neumann and others. But to Hiring it was an old 
idea. 

An Innovator 

The stored-program concept was a natural one to Hiring 
because it was essentially the same idea that he 
developed in connection with the "instructions on paper 
tape'' idea that was central to his Universal machine. The 
ACE report described how the stored-program concept 
would apply to a computer. The report's discussion of how 
the machine's instruction tables would be created leads 
to Hodges's claim that Hiring "... invented the art of com¬ 
puter programming.'' This art. in Hiring's words, would find 
that "Instruction tables will have to be made up by math¬ 
ematicians with computing experience and perhaps a cer¬ 
tain puzzle-solving ability.'' Hiring later wrote routines, in 
conjunction with J. H. Wilkinson (see the interview on page 
177), to perform floating-point arithmetic that enabled pro¬ 
grammers to multiply two numbers without knowing what 
was really happening inside the machine, thus presaging 
the development of high-level languages. His notes for the 
ACE report talk about "subsidiary" routines and about 
"burying" and "unburying'' an area of memory contain¬ 
ing information vital to a program returning from a sub- 


66 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 40 

















BOOK REVIEWS 


sidiary routine. (This is known today as "pushing" and 
"popping" the stack.) He even envisioned the use of 
remote terminals, claiming that "It would be quite possi¬ 
ble to arrange to control a distant computer by means 
of a telephone line." 

Although he left the NPL before the ACE machine was 
built because he was unable to deal with the politics of 
bureaucracy Hiring nonetheless walked through the front 
door of British computing. Taking up the post of Deputy 
Director, Royal Society Computing Laboratory at Man¬ 
chester University, he arrived in time to witness the fru¬ 
ition of the other English attempt to build a computer. 
Driven by the efforts of M.H.A. Newman (a former pro¬ 
fessor of Hiring’s and the first reader of "Computable 
Numbers") and Cambridge mathematician M.V. Wilkes, the 
university assembled a team of wartime electronics engi¬ 
neers and Bletchley Park mathematicians to work on de¬ 
veloping a computing machine. The major difference be¬ 
tween the Manchester machine and Turing's ACE was the 
type of memory used. The ACE used acoustic delay lines 
made of thin tubes filled with mercury, capped on each 
end by piezoelectric crystals. A signal traveling between 
crystals through the mercury was "stored" for a microsec¬ 
ond. The Manchester machine used electrostatic tubes, 
primarily cathode-ray tubes that stored information as a 
charged phosphor, refreshed every millisecond, on the 
tube's screen. 

Less encumbered by bureaucratic entanglements than 
the NPL, the university's computer, later called the Mark 
1, executed its first program on June 21, 1948. Hiring 
became a programmer of the Mark 1; for the rest of his 
life, which presumably ended by his own hand a scant six 
years later, he worked on research that interested him but 
led to no significant discoveries. But during this time he 
exchanged ideas with other Manchester faculty members, 
including Michael Polyani, whose disdain for the idea of 
intelligent machines gave rise to the debate that spurred 
Hiring's creation of the test that later carried his name. 
The Hiring test was put forth in an article called "Com¬ 
puting Machinery and Intelligence" in the October 1950 
issue of Mind. Its now-famous central thesis was that if a 
machine's response to interrogation was indistinguishable 
from a human's, then the machine exhibited intelligent 
behavior. 

Hodges’s treatment of the intellectual accomplishments 
of Hiring's life is a major contribution. The book is a foun¬ 
tainhead of stimulating thought—discussing Hiring's ideas 
on the determinism/free-will dialectic, for example—and 
historical minutiae. Hodges reveals, for example, that Mark 
1 program code was written in base 32 arithmetic nota¬ 
tion, a modification of Baudot teleprinter conventions. Hir¬ 
ing found it easy to think in this notation and confused 
his colleagues by writing base 32 numbers on the 
blackboard when explaining an idea. A slash (/) was the 
symbol that represented the number 0 in this notation and 
is the likely origin of today's convention of writing Os with 

(continued) 




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Computers, SS-50 Boards, and other S-100 products. 


TERMS: Add $3.00 postage. We pay balance. Orders under $15 add 75« handling. No 
C.O.D. We accept Visa and MasterCard. Texas Res. add 5-1/8% Tax. Foreign orders 
(except Canada) add 20% PAH. Orders over $50 add 85« for insurance. 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 67 













































BOOK REVIEWS 



Prini 

• spreadsheets 

• text 

• graphics 

in any order! 

riShuffleBuffer 

• Has Random Access Printing ... an intelli¬ 
gent processor which stores phrases, pas¬ 
sages, entire letters, spreadsheets, graphics 
and commands, then prints the Information 
in whatever order you want, as many times as 
you want. 


ShuffleBufler 


• Has FIFO printing (first-in, first-out)... acts as a 
reservoir, accepts data at computer speed, 
prints on its own, freeing the computer for 
further tasks. 


• Has BYPASS Printing .. . permits interruption of 
long-term buffer operations for straight-thru 
short-term printing. 


PLUS 

Data compression ... expands memory stor¬ 
age to 4 times. Infinite copy capability. Sim¬ 
ple erase feature to clear buffer. Compatible 
with virtually any serial or parallel computer, 
serial or parallel printer (letter quality or dot 
matrix) as well as plotters and modems. 


WRAP it all up with SHUFFLE/BUFFER! 

Call or write for the dealer nearest you: 



Interactive Structures Inc. 
146 Montgomery Avenue 
Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004 
Telephone: (215) 667-1713 



a slash through them (also a good way to differentiate 0 
from the letter “O"). TLiring was also fascinated throughout 
his life by the natural occurrences of flower petals, fir-cone 
florets, and sunflower seeds in a Fibonacci number 
sequence. 

Aside from its contributions to the historical record, this 
book is a fascinating human story. Turing's disdain of social 
conventions, his lack of social graces, and his individuali¬ 
ty brought him both pleasure and pain. Though not a psy¬ 
chological history, A lan Hiring: The Enigma explores the 
human side of the man who gave life to some remarkable 
ideas. Equally important, the study remains aware of the 
role played by the circumstances of a man's life in the 
development of his thought. Turing's ideas could have 
taken a much different tack were it not for a world war 
and a German cipher machine. 

The major unanswered question about Alan TUring is 
why he took his life. There was a homosexual scandal, 
resulting in a conviction for violation of sexual decency 
laws, and a subsequent agonizing year of drug treatment 
with female hormones. But his suicide came a full year 
after the end of the treatments and probation for his of¬ 
fense. Hodges closes his book with a 15-page discussion 
of government debates about excluding homosexuals 
from sensitive scientific and research posts for fear of their 
susceptibility to blackmail and coercion. But he never 
satisfactorily answers the question, Why suicide? Turing's 
mother never accepted this verdict, claiming that Alan's 
death was accidental. If Hodges explored the other 
possibilities, he doesn't reveal his findings. 

Though minor, there is one flaw in this book: it is 
plagued with editing and typographical errors, no doubt 
a result of the complexity of the manuscript. Anyone in¬ 
terested in the idea of intelligent machines should have 
no problem overlooking these errors. The book is never¬ 
theless a major work in the history of computer science. 
Well indexed and containing 28 pages of bibliographic 
notes, it is a valuable resource for information about the 
people who created the technology and the papers they 
wrote describing their ideas. 

G. Michael Wose is BYTE's senior technical editor for theme articles. 
He can be contacted at POB 372, Hancock. NH 03449. 


COMPUTER GRAPHICS 

PROGRAMMING 

Reviewed by Judith L. Maggiore 

T he Graphical Kernel System (GKS) is the international 
standard for computer-graphics software. Computer 
Graphics Programming is an important addition to the stan¬ 
dard document defining GKS because it explains concepts, 
examples, and figures that could not be included in the 
standard document. Gunter Enderle, Klaus Kansy. and 
Gunther Pfaff are in a good position to write about that 

( continued ) 


68 BYT E • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 152 






WHY INVEST $90 IN MODULA-2? 
BECAUSE YOU’RE COMPETING WITH PEOPLE 
WHO BELIEVE THE BEST PROGRAMMING METHOD 
IS THE ONE THEY ALREADY KNOW. 


Whoever decided to make the 
switch from Roman Numerals to a 
more efficient notation for doing 
arithmetic should be a hero. His 
friends probably reacted as if he’d 
asked them to learn a whole new 
language. We think you'll see the 
parallel with Modula-2, especially 
after you try it. 

Niklaus Wirth, creator of Mod¬ 
ula-2, asserts that Modula- 2 is an 
abstract tool for the control of com¬ 
puting machinery: “In my opinion, 
the term programming language 
is ill chosen and misleading. Pro¬ 
gram notation would be eminently 
more appropriate.” 

We’re not proposing that you learn 
a “new language.” That would be like 
arguing the merits of English versus 
French. But it does make sense to 
avail yourself of the most efficient 
known technology for controlling 
computing machinery -- while your 
competition is left in the dark ages. 

Compared to Modula-2, whatever 
program notation you’re now using 
is like doing your arithmetic in 
Roman Numerals. 

In this limited space, we won’t try 
to prove that Modula-2 is the best 
available competitive tool for the 
serious computer entrepreneur. 
“Such matters,” according to Frank 
Herbert (DUNE), “can only be 
tested in the crucible of survival, not 
in the play of symbols.” 

The question is, for $90, can you 
afford not to test our claim? No other 
company in history has made it as 
easy for you to do business. Our 
entire object-program licensing 
agreement is on this page. 

So put some distance between 
yourself and those who believe the 
best programming method is the one 
they already know. 


MODULA-2 COMPILERS FOR IBM PCs, 
MACINTOSH, LISA AND APPLE lls — $90 

Modula-2 compiler and interpreter with 
enhanced, bit-mapped graphics are available 
for Apple’s Lisa, Macintosh and II computers; 
IBM’s PC, XT and compatibles (MS-DOS 
2.0); and others to be announced. 


ABOUT MACMODULA-2™ 

MacModula-2 is what 128KB Macintosh 
users have been waiting for. Over 400 of the 
ToolBox ROM routines are supported, includ¬ 
ing pull-down menus, multiple windows, 
multiple fonts, QuickDraw graphics, the 
ROM-based serial driver, the sound driver, 
mouse support, etc. The M-code interpreter 
reduces memory requirements for 128KB 
Mac systems, yet executes at up to 75% of 
native-mode speeds if extensive use is made 
of the ROM routines. 

Also included with MacModula-2 is a full¬ 
screen, mouse-driven editor, a Transfer Menu 
facility that reduces the need for returning to 
the desktop between compiles, links and 
edits, and a Resource Maker that allows the 
entrepreneur to ship modifiable menus to 
customers, without shipping the actual Mac- 
Modula-2 source code. 


THE IDEAL MODULA-2 ENGINE 

We’d love to introduce you to the Lilith. It’s 
a workstation computer with bit-map graph¬ 
ics, three-button mouse and a bit-slice proc¬ 
essor. The Lilith was designed by the original 
Modula-2 team at the Swiss Federal Institute 
of Technology (ETH) as the ideal Modula-2 
engine. Over 200 have been placed into aca¬ 
demic and research environments. Now 
Modula Corporation makes a commercial ver¬ 
sion for your more demanding problems. 
Just call 800/LILITH2 to hear about customer 
benchmark reports. 


SOFTWARE LICENSE 

Join us in a commitment to personal integ¬ 
rity. Our prices are fair. Unlike program license 
agreements you can’t help but violate, we’ve 
tried reTHINKing a few things. Perhaps we 
can start a trend that makes violation of 
another’s intellectual property unfashiona¬ 
ble. Without all the “whereas” and “herewith” 
language, here’s our attempt to transfuse 
integrity into the entrepreneurial bloodstream: 

You agree to treat the information we send you as if it were a book, 
with the exception that you are granted the right to make backup 
copies. Simple, Pournelle logic! 

In the spirit of the "book" analogy, you are free to take your book to 
another house (or computer) with you. This, of course, means 
someone at your own house (or computer) cannot simultaneously 
read it. Similarly, you can loan your book to a friend. But there can be 
no possibility you can read it at the same time You may sell your 
book, only if the new owner agrees to these same conditions (which 
means a copy of this agreement, signed by the new owner, must be 
sent to us). Finally, just as in a book, it lacks integrity to substitute 
your name for that of the legitimate author. 

As for our warranties: Defective software may be returned within 
thirty days for a replacement But just like any other self-help book, 
its value to you is what you make of it. No matter how badly it 
damages your life, or that of your customers, we re not obligated to 
do anything whatsoever about it. 

Now, it’s time to plqy “How'd- you-like-to- 
see-something-rea//y-scary?” When you 
send us your check or credit card authoriza¬ 
tion, enclose this page (or a copy) with an 
original signature. Violate this agreement of 
integrity, and you’ll get a doozer of a course in 
integrity at the claws of our attorneys; and 
they'll tell your mother. 


MODULA 

CORPORATION 

reTIIINK 


1673 West 820 North, Provo, UT 84601 
801/375-7400 or 800/LILITH2 


In addition to information on the Lilith, please send me the Modula-2 Compiler at $90 for the □ IBM PC or XT, or the Apple □ lls, □ 
Lisa or the □ Macintosh. 

Utah residents include 6% sales tax. 

$10 handling and postage for all orders. 

$_Total amount enclosed/authorized. 

My signature below, besides being a possible credit card authorization, indicates my agreement to all the above terms. 

□ My check is enclosed 

□ Please bill my □ VISA / □ MASTERCARD 


Card number 


Expiration 


Signature 


Date 


Print/type full name 

Title 



Company 

Phone 



Address 

City 

State 


Zip 


Copyright © 1985 by Modula Corporation IBM'" IBM Corp., AppleApple Computer Inc., MS T “ Microsoft., Advertising by The Rick Bennett Agency, 408/258-2708. 


Inquiry 224 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 69 
















Inquiry 50 


cnmiK 

TfllTTTTl V y ftllllllt 


edicol and Dental 

rJ-^i 


• Appointment Scheduling 

• Private Patient Billing 

• Third Party Claim Form Preparation 

• Medical Diagnostic Records 

• Word Processing 

• Continuous Financial History 


ISin. MAC 
MS-DOS. 


TM 


WANG 


4 


CLrJ>: 

xinniixy Xjiiiimy 


MICRO COMPUTER DIVISION 

55722 SANTA FE TRAIL 
Yucca Volley, Ca. 92284 

( 619 ) 365-9718 



Macintosh meets Epson. 

For under $130, HanZon can enhance any Epson 
printer to Apple® standards. The HanZon Universal 
Interface Card plugs into your Epson MX, FX or RX. 
This combination delivers total compatibility with 
any software—even MacPaint™ and AppleWorks— 
that you run on the Macintosh™ or Apple lie. Ask 
your Epson dealer or call (206) 487-1717. 


HAN/ON 


Compute* Enhancements 

18732 142nd Ave. N.E.. Woodinville. WA 98072 

Apple and MacPaint are trademarks of Apple Computer Inc 
Macintosh is a trademark licensed to Apple Computer Inc 


BOOK REVIEWS 


standard because they have been involved in its design 
and review for several years. 

The history of computer graphics has been one of frag¬ 
mentation and separation. The subject is broad, covering 
areas including computer-aided design (CAD), business 
graphics, mapping, video games, and more. Each area had 
its own preferred hardware for displaying pictures. CAD 
applications used vector-refresh devices, while business 
graphics used storage tubes and pen plotters. The intro¬ 
duction of raster devices led to even more diversity. Soft¬ 
ware was tailored to take advantage of the capabilities of 
a particular device. As well as being device-dependent, 
computer-graphics software was also application- and sys¬ 
tem-dependent. There was little relation between the soft¬ 
ware used to design circuits and the software used to draw 
histograms. This situation meant that graphics programs 
were useful only for the application, operating system, and 
device for which they were specifically designed. 

As graphics devices became less expensive, more peo¬ 
ple discovered computer graphics. The advantages of be¬ 
ing able to display data as pictures are obvious. Once the 
prohibitive cost was removed, computer-graphics users 
proliferated. These new users of computer graphics were 
not interested in designing whole new systems—they were 
interested in using computers to draw pictures. 

At this point, the field was ripe for a standard. The de¬ 
velopment of this standard began in the mid 1970s, with 
many organizations participating. In the United States, 
standardization was initiated in 1974 by the Association 
for Computing Machinery's Graphics Standards Planning 
Committee, part of the special-interest group on computer 
graphics. This work was taken over by ANSI (American Na¬ 
tional Standards Institute) committee X3H3, one of the 
major contributors to the review of GKS. The work of all 
the committees in various countries was consolidated 
under the auspices of the International Standards 
Organization (ISO) and eventually led to the development 
of GKS. The authors estimate that there were 50 man-years 
of effort devoted to the development of the graphics 
standard. 

Computer Graphics Programming has something for every¬ 
one. The novice to computer graphics will find the defini¬ 
tions of graphical terms and concepts very valuable. Ex¬ 
perienced graphics users and experts will find the book 
the best help available for understanding GKS. Applica¬ 
tions programmers who plan to use an implementation 
of GKS will probably use this text daily as a reference. Im¬ 
plementors of GKS will find the sections on device and 
language interfaces and implementation styles invaluable. 
Students and teachers on either the undergraduate or 
graduate level can use Computer Graphics Programming as a 
text or reference for a course in computer graphics. 

Well Organized 

The authors have organized this book very well. Section 
I contains an overview of the standard's general concepts 

( continued ) 


70 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 130 






































The Toshiba P1351 is the ultimate 3-in-One 
printer. Other printers try to approach our level of 
graphics sophistication. Other dot matrix printers 
can come close to us on speed. And there are 
even a couple of printers with a 24-pin dot matrix 
print head similar to ours. But our combination 
of graphics, speed and letter quality makes the 
Toshiba P1351 stand alone. 

Intelligence with an eye for detail. The 
Toshiba P1351 comes with one of the most 
advanced print heads in the industry. A unique 
high-density 24-pin dot matrix print head that 
produces amazingly sharp 180 x 180 dot-per- 
square inch, fully dot-addressable graphics. So 
you get unbeatable high-resolution charts, 
graphs and illustrations no one can duplicate. 
And it's supported on popular graphics software 
like Lotus 1-2-3™ 

Intelligence that’s unlimited. The Toshiba 
P1351 does more than give you access to three 
resident typefaces for word processing. 

It also gives you the ability to down¬ 
load an unlimited variety from a 
growing library of IBM-compat¬ 
ible software typefaces. They're 
all stored on floppy disk. And 
you get programming access 
to five typefaces at any time. 


Intelligence that’s letter-perfect Our unique 
print head gives you letter-quality results from any 
typeface you choose. And with Qume SPRINT 5™ 
emulation, the Toshiba P1351 can give you those 
results from almost every popular word processing 
program. Of course, it's fully IBM-compatible. And 
there's even an optional forms tractor or sheet 
feeder for paper handling versatility. 

Intelligence and speed. You won't have to 
sacrifice speed for letter-quality printing. Because 
the Toshiba P1351 gives you the best of both. 
Sharp, clean letter copy at 100 cps. And even 
faster draft copy at 192 cps. 

Intelligent and dependable. The Toshiba 
P1351 3-in-One™ printer is also engineered and 
built with a very intelligent attitude toward depend¬ 
ability. And optional third party 24-hour service 
is also available. That's why, over the past four 
years, more than 200,000 intelligent buyers have 
depended on Toshiba 24-pin printers. 

So make the intelligent move. To the 
Toshiba P1351, the first 3-in-One 
printer with a good head for 
graphics. And everything else. 
For more information, call 
1-800-457-7777, Operator 32. 

Lotus and 1-2-3 are trademarks of Lotus Development 
Corporation SPRINT 5 is a trademark of Qume Corporation 



In Touch with Tomorrow 

TOSHIBA 

TOSHIBA AMERICA. INC. Information Systems Division 


Inquiry 314 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 71 




















































Micros. Mice. 


When you can’t stop by your local Micro Mart Store, call us direct. 
ORDERSONLY 


1 - 800 - 241-8149 

At Micro Mart, we’ve got our 
finger on the pulse of the microcomputer 
industry. And, from our retail stores to 
our telemarketing divisions, we’re in 
touch with the very latest developments, 
the newest products and the cutting edge 
of expert advice. 

When you need the right product at 
the right price, remember the sales, 
service and support our local store 
experts and national distribution center 
can give you. 

So if you can’t drop by your local 
Micro Mart Store, let us point you in the 
right direction. Ask for your best price 
and expert advice. 


Dot Matrix 
EPSON FX80/100._ 
EPSON RX80/100._ 
EPSON LQ1500._ 


MAYNARD Complete line._ 

Graphic Cards 


EPSON JX80, color printer. 
OKIDATA 92 & 93, ML84, 
(200cps.), w/opt. IBM 
PROMS, Pacemark 2410, 

(350 cps)- 

TOSHIBA P-1351 & 1340. _$1295/$799 

DATAPRODUCTS 
PRISM 8050 Color, 

132col., 200 

cps._$1295 

STARMICRONICS 
Complete line._ 


STB Graphics Plus 11, color & mono, w/par. port 

& software-$369 

HERCULES Mono & color graphics cards support 

Lotus._ 

PLANTRONICS ColorPlus + , HiRescolor bd., 
par. port w/software.. 


AT&T Personal Computer. Innovative 
hardware for a wide range of business 
applications. 



128 K expandable to 640K, 2-360K, 
DS/DD Disk Drives, Monochrome 

Display, IBM Compatible_Special 

introductory price. 


TEXAS INSTRUMENTS 

855. _$729 

NEC Pinwriters, P2&P3, 180 

cps_ 

DIABLO C-Series C-150. Color 
inkjet, IBM color compatible._$985 
letter Quality 

N EC Spin writers 2050,3550, 8850. _ 

DIABLO 630/630ECS _$1395/$1795 

C-ITOH Starwriter, (40 cps), Printmaster, 

(55 cps)_$950/$ 1299 

We carry a full range of form handling options. 

Floppy Disk Drives_ 

TANDON TM100-2, DD/DS, 360K. 

1/2 HEIGHT DISK DRIVES From SHUGART, 
TEAC. PC, XT & AT compatible_$119 

Hard Discs_ 

Micro Mart carries all the major brands 
If you don’t see it—ask for it. 

PEACHTREE PERIPHERALS 
P-10,20&50, auto boot, int. & 

ext_Start @ $845 

SYSGEN 10& 20 Meg 
w/streamer tape..$2395/$2795 
SYSGEN Image & Quickfile, 
streamer tape back-up for 

your IBM XT & AT._ 

BERNOULLI 
TECHNOLOGY Hard Disc 

Subsystems._$2895 

MAYNARD Complete 
line of hard disc 
subsystems.. 


TECMAR Graphics Master, HiRes color & mono 

supports Lotus._$459 

QUADRAM QUADCOLOR I&II, color cards._ 
PARADISE SYSTEM Multi-display or Modular 
Graphics Cards, color & mono, par. 
port._Starting @ $299 

Software _ 

Accounting 

SORCIM/IUS Complete line including windows.. 

BPI ACCOUNTING Complete line._ 

Spreadsheets & Integrated Packages 

ASHTON-TATE Framework. _$345 

LOTUS Symphony and Lotus. _ 


MICROSOFT MultiPlan, w/templates._ 
k MDBS Knowledge Man._ 


^SORCIM SuperCalc3, Vers. 2.0_ 
i SPI Open Access. _ 

Enhancements & Utilities 
SOFTCRAFT Fancy Font.. 


FOX & GELLER Complete line 
of enhancements for dBase II, 
III &Rhase 4000. 

NORTON Utilities._$65 

ROSESOFT ProKey 
3.0. _$89 


LEADING EDGE Color PC, 256K, 2-360K 

DS/DD Disk Drives, Amdek Color 600._ $1995 

MINDSET Personal Computer, 256K, 2-360K 
DS/DD Disk Drives, W/Mindset Mouse._$1795 

Networking/Protocol 
Conversion_ 

SNA & BISYNC 3780, 5251,3274,3278.. 


EMERALD Hard disc 
drives w/back-up_ 

Chips 


INTEL 8087 High speed 
coproc. 

$169^fc 

64K RAMCHIPS. 

$35/64K^ 

256K RAMCHIPS. 


PC TURBO 186 by ORCHID. 80186 coprocessor 

board_$829 

IRMA/IRMA LINE Replaces 3278’s 

w/PC’s_$899/$ 1099 


FORTEGRAPH for IRMA , upgrades IRMA to 
3278 graphics capability.. 


IRM APRINT Enhances IRMA graphics._ 

PCnet By ORCHID, complete line._Start @ $299 
BLUE LYNX 5251 Mod 12 & 3276 Emulators by 

TECHLAND_ 

SANTACLARA PC Terminal_ 

Printers & Plotters_ 

Thousands in stock. 

HOUSTON INSTRUMENTS Plotters and 
Digitizers. 


Multifunction Boards 

We have a complete line of multifunction 
bds . compatible with the Portable, AT, XT, & Jr, 
SIX PAR 64-384K, multifunc. 

MEGAPLUS 64-512K, max. 8 func. 

I/O PLUS Ser.,Clk.,Splr., Ramdisk,opt. 2nd 
Ser., Par. & Game.. 

QUADRAM QUADBOARD, 64-384K 

multifunc- 

TECMAR CAPTAIN, 64-384K, multifunc._$249 

TALLTREE J-RAMII, 0-512K, w/software._ 

TALLTREE J-RAMIIX, 0-512K, 

w/software_$129 

MICROLOG BABY BLUE II, 64-256K, Z80 

coproc., + software._ 

ORCHID PC Blossom, 64-384K, w/opt. PCnet 
Piggy-Back_$259 


Atlanta, New Orleans, Nashville, Miami, Tampa, Orlando 


72 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 
















































































Advice. Price. 


CENTRAL POINT SOFTWARE 

Copy II PC. _$35 

ATI Training _$55 

SOFTSTYLE Set FX + and Printworks. Printer 

control packages_ 

SIDEWAYS Inverts printout_$45 

BORLAND Sidekick. _$39 

LIVING VIDEO TEXT Think Tank_ 

Compilers & Language Tools 

LATTICE C-Compilers._$299 

MICROSOFT Complete line_ 

WORDTECH The dBase compiler_ 

DIGITAL RESEARCH Complete line_ 

BORLAND Turbo Pascal, Turbo Toolbox 


and more_$39/each 

Graphics & CAD 

Zsoft PC Paint Brush, mouse driven graphics._$95 
DECISION RESOURCES 

ChartMaster/Sign-Master pkgs._ 

AUTODESK AutoCAD. Complete line. 

EN ERTRONICS Energraphics, graphics & CAD 

package._ 

MICROPRO ChartStar. _ 


Microsoft Mouse. Bus or serial 
mechanical mouse, comes with Mouse 
Menu software. Works with WORD and 
other popular software_$159 



PC Mouse,/ro/w Mouse Systems. Serial 
optical 3-button mouse with Pop-Up™ 
Menus and PC Paint software. 
Preconfigured for all the most popular 
software._$159 


MICROSOFT Chart._ 

DIGITAL RESF;ARCH Presentation Master_ 

Communications 

MICROSTUF CROSSTALK XVI. _$99 

HAYES SMARTCOMII. _ 

Word Processors 

MU LTIMATE w/Spelling checker & tutorial .$259 

SAMNA III, wd. processor._ 

MICROSOFT Word, w/or w/out mouse._ 

LIFETREE Volkswriter Deluxe. _ 

MICROPRO WordStar Pro Pack & 

Series2000. _$245 

SSI WordPerfect. _ 

WORDMARC Wordmarc. _ 

Office & Project Planning 
Call for our Tax and Tax Planning packages. 

H A RVARD Harvard Project Manager. _$249 

IUS Easy SalesPro _ 

MICROSOFT Project. _ 

Data Base Managers 

MICRORIM 4000ox6000, Report Writer&Clout 
options._ 


GMS SYSTEMS Power-base. _ 

WARNER SOFTWARE The desk organizer._ 

ASHTONTATE dBase II& III _ 

MICROSTUF Infoscope. _ 

Modems_ 

FiAYES Smart modem 300, 1200, & 

1200B. _ 

RIXON 1200-4800BAUDsync.&async. models.. 
ANCHOR AUTOMATION Signalman Mark 

XII. _$259 

VEN-TEL 1200 BAUD Half Card for the IBM 

Portable & XT._ 

POPCOM Popcorn, int. and ext. w/voice & data 
comm_ 

Miscellaneous 
Hardware 


Service & Repairs 

*On-Site —We have hundreds of service 
locations nationally. 

* Depot— Our National Service Center is 
one of the fastest in the US. 
*We have— A wide variety of services 
available. Just call us. 


©Copyright Micro Mart 1984. 
Technology Corporate Campus 
3159 Campus Drive 
Norcross, Georgia 30071 


& Accessories 

DYSAN Diskettes, PC, XT & 

AT compatible_ 

MICRO MART Diskettes 

DS/DD, 7 yr. war._$19/10 

KEYTRONICS5/50c£ 5151. 

Keyboards._ 

LQ SHEET FEEDERS Sheet feeders.. 
CURTIS Accessories._ 


For information or the store location nearest you, call 

( 404 ) 449-8089 


HAYES Mach II & Mach III joysticks.. 
PENCEPT Penpad, soft ware avail.. 
TOUCHSTONE TECHNOLOGY 
Touchstone I. Ten key pad w/ cursor 

control._ 

QUADRAM MICROFAZER, print buffer, 

8-128K_ 

TR1PPELITE Back up power supply 
200-1000 watts, and ISOBA R surge 
protectors, 4 & 8 plug. 

Monitors & CRT’s_ 

PGS MAX 12, amber, 720h x 350v._ 

PGS SR-I2, 690h x 480v, w/dual scan cd._ 

PGS HX-12, 690 Dot RGB._ 

QUADRAM QUADCHROME, 690 Dot 
RGB_ 


$775 


AMDEK COLOR 300, 500, 600, 700, 710, 725, 
new complete line of HiRes RGB’s w/new low 

prices._ 

AMDEK 300A/300G, composite 
monitors _ 


$139/$129 


AMDEK 310A, amber w/3 yr. war.. 

WYSE Terminals, 100,75,50, entire line in stock.. 


YOUR PERSONAL BLUE CHIP CARD 


MICRO 

MART 


1234 567 890 123 


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Micro Mart has financing options 
available. Ask for a Micro Mart 
Blue Chip Credit Card application 
today. 



$439 



America’s PC Specialist. 



IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation. AT&T, Leading Edge, Mindset, Microsoft, Mouse Systems and their products, respectively, are trademarks 
of AT&T Information Systems, I eading Edge Products Inc., Mindset Corporation, Microsoft Corporation and Mouse Systems Corporal ion. All Prices are subject to change without notice. 

Ft. Lauderdale, Louisville, Tyson’s Corner, Rockville, Pittsburgh. 


Inquiry 211 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 73 










































































Inquiry 293 


Sp 


COMPUTERS 

INCORPORATED 


COMPARE AND SAVE 


SOFTWARE 

Lotus 1-2-3 $309 

Symphony 440 

R Bos© 4000 309 

D Bos© II 309 

Sup©rCalcV©r. 245 
D Bas© III 399 

Framework 399 

Project Mgr. 230 

Wordstar Propak 390 
Sidekick/Pascal 75 
Home Accountant 110 
The Accounting 
Partner GL/Ap/Ar/pr 285 
Fortran 269 

Multiplan w/budget 149 
Microword w/Mouse284 
C Compiler 310 

PFS Holiday Pak 199 
Multimate 275 

Wordstar Propak 390 
Knowledgeman 299 
Fit simulator 37 


WE SHIP 
OVERSEAS 

TEL: (415) 340-1006 

851 Burlway Road *303 
Burlingame, CA 94010 
U.S.A. Telex: 470477 Mons 

HARDWARE 

AST 6 pack Plus 64K $265 
AST Megapack 256K 395 
64K (9 set) Chips 44 

Hercules 

Monochrome 370 

Tallgrass 12 to 70 MB call 
PCnet Blossom 64K 450 

Modem 300/1200/1200 
Hayes $199, $499, $425 
USI Monitors Green/ 


Amb 130 

PRINTERS 

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BOOK REVIEWS 


and vocabulary. The precise and clear definitions of graph¬ 
ical terms and concepts presented in this section should 
go a long way toward clarifying the vocabulary we need 
to talk about computer graphics. These basic terms and 
concepts form the basis of the more formal description 
of GKS found later in the book. Included in this section 
are chapters on the principles and goals used in the design 
of GKS and the interfaces to GKS. Since GKS is designed 
to be device- and system-independent, it must be inter¬ 
faced on one side to a specific language and on the other 
to the graphical hardware. Chapter 6 is especially useful 
because here the authors provide concise definitions of 
all the main ideas used in GKS. These definitions are 
followed by chapters that supply additional detail and 
amplification about each concept. 

The second section describes the process of the devel¬ 
opment of the GKS standard. The authors sketch briefly 
the history of computer graphics and the events that led 
up to the final GKS document. The most interesting part 
of this section is chapter 3, which presents some of the 
issues the developers of GKS had to resolve. Arguments 
pro and con on each issue and the ultimate decision of 
the committee are discussed. 

Section III, the largest part of the book, is a detailed 
description of the functional capabilities of GKS. Enderle, 
Kansy. and Pfaff explain all the functions and data struc¬ 
tures relevant to GKS. 

The definitions of the functions are presented in two 
parts. First is the language-independent version, taken 
directly from the GKS standard document. Next is the 
FORTRAN definition. Following the function definitions are 
examples of programs or program fragments using GKS. 
The examples are presented in both Pascal and FORTRAN 
and very clearly show typical uses of GKS by applications 
programmers. The book also includes some exercises in¬ 
tended to help students and teachers. 

Section IV will be most useful to the implementors of 
GKS. those people who will write the subroutine package 
that makes GKS available to applications programmers. 
This section covers methods of implementation, imple¬ 
mentation styles, interfaces to devices, and interfaces to 
specific languages. A mapping of the abstract data struc¬ 
tures of GKS to FORTRAN data structures is included. 
Other topics in this section are graphics metafiles, valida¬ 
tion of GKS implementations, and three-dimensional ex¬ 
tensions to GKS. 

Evaluation 

This book clarifies an area that is often confusing and 
obscure. Tferms and concepts are excellently presented. 
Anyone seriously involved in the use of GKS will find this 
book invaluable. 

More pictures and illustrations should have been in¬ 
cluded. A book on computer graphics needs lots of pic¬ 
tures. The second problem is minor. The use of the English 
language seems awkward at times. 

( continued) 


74 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 335 
























































it C did for Programming 
Mark Williams has done for C Programming 


The C Pr< 
from 

MWC86 gets your C programs run¬ 
ning faster and uses less memory space 
than any other compiler on the market. 
Then csd, Mark Wilhamwfcvolutionary 
C Source Debugger, helps you debug 
faster. That’s The C Progranmiing Sys¬ 
tem from Mark Williams Compafl 

MWC86 

MWC86 is the most highly optimized 
C compiler available anywhere for the 
DOS and 8086 environment. The bench¬ 
marks prove it! They show MWC86 is 
unmatched in speed and code density. 

MWC86 supports large and small 
models of compilation, the 8087 math 
coprocessor and DOS 2.0 pathnames. 
The compiler features common code 
elimination, peephole optimization and 
register variables. It includes the most 
complete libraries. Unlike its competi¬ 
tion, MWC86 supports the full C lan¬ 
guage including recent extensions such 
as the Berkeley structure rules, voids, 
enumerated data types, UNIX* I/O calls 
and structure assignments. 

Quality is why Intel, DEC and Wang 
chose to distribute MWC86. These in¬ 
dustry leaders looked and compared 
and found Mark Williams to be best. 

User Friendly 

MWC86 is the easiest to use of all 
compilers. One command runs all 
phases from pre-processor to assembler 
and linker. MWC86 eliminates the need 
to search for error messages in the back 
of a manual. All error messages appear 
on the screen in English. 

A recent review of MWC86 in 
PC World, June, 1984, summed it up: 


*Unix is a Trademark of Bell Laboratories. 


“Of all the compilers reviewed, MWC86 
would be my first choice for product 
development. It compiles quickly, pro j 
duces superior error messages, and r j 

'enerates quick, compact object j _ 

lib rary is small and fast 
the industry 
C libraries /’ 

csd C Source Debugger 

; not content to 
write the best C compiler on the mar¬ 
ket. To advance the state of the art in 
software development, Mark Williams 
wrote csd. 

csd C Source Debugger serves as a 
microscope on the program. Any C 
expression can be entered and evalu¬ 
ated. With csd a programmer can set 
tracepoints on variables and expressions 
with full history capability and can 
single step a program to find bugs. The 
debugger does not affect either code 
size or execution time, csd features 
online help instructions; the ability to 
walk through the stack; the debugging 
of graphics programs without disturb- 


SIEVE 

Time in Seconds 
H Large Model 

■ Small Model 
Size in Bytes 
□ Large Model 

■ Small Model 



MWC86 DRI 


ing the program under test; and evalu¬ 
ation, source, program and history 
M^indows. 

csd eases the most difficult part of 
' development — debugging. Because 
csd debugs in C, not assembler, a pro¬ 
grammer no longer has to rely on old- 
fashioned assembler tools, but can 
work as if using a C interpreter — in 
real time. 

The C Programming System 
from Mark Williams now supports 
the following libraries: 

Library Company 

Windows for C Creative Solutions 

Halo Media Cybernetics 

PHACT PHACT Associates 

The Greenleaf Functions Greenleaf Software 

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The C Programming System 
from Mark Williams 

The C Programming System from 
Mark Williams delivers not only the 
best C compiler for the 8086 but also 
the only C source level debugger. That’s 
why it does for C programming what C 
did for programming. The Mark Wil¬ 
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programmer the MWC86 C compiler 
and the csd C Source Debugger for 
only $495. Order today by calling 
1-800-MWC-1700. Major credit cards 
accepted. 

Technical support for The Mark Wil¬ 
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vided free of charge by the team that 
developed it. 


Mark Williams Company 

1430 W. Wrightwood Ave. 
Chicago, 1L 60614 



Inquiry 197 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 75 























BOOK REVIEWS 


Inquiry 349 for Dealers. Inquiry 350 for End-Users. 


Powerful Single Board Computer 
Includes CP/M Plus on Disk 



Z80 CPU 

M5C ICO uses the most popular microprocessor, the 
Z80. as its mam CPU MSC ICO runs at 4 MHZ without 
any wait states The whole system is incorporated into a 
high quality four layer PC board measuring only 145mm 
X 250mm |I0" x 6‘] The system requires only I 2 Amps 
at + 5 Volts and 0 1 Amps at +12 Volts 

Banked CP/M Plus Included 
CP/M Plus (3 0 banked| is included on disk with all 
manuals CP/M Plus is upwardly compatible with CP/M 
2 2 and includes the SID debugger, the MAC and RMAC 
macro assemblers and the LINK-80 loader MSC-ICO's 
custom BIOS provides support for multiple disk formats 
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formatting, disk copying, defining function keys and 
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128Kb RAM 

One 64K bank of memory is devoted to CP/M and its 
disk cache blocks, while the other 64K bank is devoted 
to applications programs This arrangement not only 
provides more memory for programs, but it significantly 
increases the speed of disk I/O 

Internal Floppy Disk Controller 
MSC-ICO handles Shugart/AN5I standard floppy disk 
drives in a variety of sizes and formats 

• 8 SSSD. 243Kb 
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Up to four drives of any density or size can be con- 
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on-board to make disk drive connections easy 
High Speed CRT Controller 
MSC-ICO contains an 80 x 24 line memory mapped CRT 
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Cursor escape sequences are an extension of DEC'S 
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Video, 128Kb. CP/M Plus™, and more 
Two RS232C Ports 

MSC-ICO communicates with printers, modems, plot¬ 
ters. and other standard RS232C devices through Its 
two serial ports These ports are independently pro¬ 
grammable for baud rates, stop bits, data format and 
parity Synchronous communication on Port A is 
jumper selectable 

Centronics Parallel Port 
A standard Centronics parallel port allows MSC-ICO to 
communicate with printers and other parallel devices 
Parallel Keyboard Port 

MSC-ICO connects to any ASCII parallel keyboard of 
positive or negative polarity with a negative strobe A 
type-ahead buffer and programmable function keys are 
provided by MSC-ICO's custom BIOS 

16 Bit TTL I/O Port 

This port allows you to access printers, relays. LED's. 
DAC's, ADC s, switches, EPROM programmers and 
many other devices 

Clock Calendar 

The battery backed up clock calendar provides time and 
date information to CP/M for file stamping The clock 
can also be accessed from applications programs 

External Bus 

MSC-ICO's 50 pin bus connector provides expansion for 
a hard disk controller. RAM disk, graphics or a 68000 
system Please call or write for more information on 
these options 

MSC-ICO Saves Time and Money 

With MSC-ICO's low cost and quality worksmanship. 
why spend time, energy and money to design, debug 
and test your own system Whether you require single 
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TIME 



Time is money! Moore 
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It's too early to tell what effect GKS will have on the 
computer-graphics industry. It will be interesting to see 
how GKS stands up in light of recent developments. What¬ 
ever the future of GKS. it is a very important development 
now, and Computer Graphics Programming is indispensable to 
anyone wishing to understand and use GKS. 

Judith L. M aggiore programmed graphics for three gears prior to 
teaching computer science classes and computer-graphics seminars at 
Keene State College (Mathematics Dept., Keene, NH 03431). 


DATA STRUCTURES 
AND PROGRAM DESIGN 
Reviewed by Edward Brent 

T he boundary between writing programs that merely 
get by and designing programs that perform complex 
tasks efficiently is one that many programmers never cross. 
Yet it is a boundary that is fundamental to the develop¬ 
ment of programming as a discipline. People who program 
by the seat of their pants and hold their programs together 
with the electronic equivalent of spit and baling wire must 
give way to trained programmers who develop finely 
crafted, efficient, and maintainable programming solutions 
to difficult problems. The selection and design of ap¬ 
propriate data structures and algorithms is a crucial ele¬ 
ment of professional-quality programming. The central 
role of data structures in professional programming is in¬ 
sightfully examined by Robert L. Kruse in Data Structures 
and Program Design. 

Audience 

In the preface Kruse indicates this book includes all the 
topics of specific courses recommended and offered by 
ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Curriculum 
78. The prerequisite for the book is a first course in pro¬ 
gramming. or equivalent experience, and elementary ex¬ 
perience with Pascal. 

I find the book suitable for a second course in computer 
programming. However, it could also be of value to pro¬ 
grammers not enrolled in a computer science course but 
interested in upgrading their programming skills. 

But the issues of selecting appropriate data structures 
should not be relegated to a second course on computing. 
Because the selection of data structures is such an im¬ 
portant aspect of quality programming, it should not be 
left for more advanced books. 

Kruse consistently highlights the distinction between 
abstract structures and their implementations. He begins 
by addressing the programming principles of top-down 
refinement, program design, and review and testing; he 
illustrates these principles with extended examples. 

In chapters 2 and 5, Kruse discusses the more impor¬ 
tant structures: stacks, queues, and other lists in both con¬ 
tiguous and linked representations and binary trees. He 

( continued ) 


76 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 225 



















Genlech 



COMPUTERS 


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Inquiry 120 


































































Inquiry 131 




Friendly Computer Center, Inc. 

1381 Coney Island Avenue. Brooklyn. New York 11230 


EPSON 


RX 80 

NEW RX-80 ft Plus 
FX 80 

JX 80 color 
RX 100 

Titan 2 Board for QX-10 


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w/64K 

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BOOK REVIEWS 


covers more advanced applications of trees, including AVL 
(Adelson-Velskii and Landis) trees, contiguous represen¬ 
tation of binary trees, lexicographic search trees, and ex¬ 
ternal searching. There is no discussion of graphs. 

Kruse examines algorithms for searching, looking up 
tables, accessing hash tables, and sorting. He presents an 
in-depth study of recursion. The author works out large, 
complex programs in detail, and he develops programs 
to index text and to evaluate mathematical expressions. 

In the appendixes. Kruse discusses techniques from 
combinatorial mathematics for assessing algorithms 
analytically. He also covers methods for manually remov¬ 
ing recursion and presents standard syntax diagrams and 
tables for Pascal. 

Pascal and Clear Examples 

Kruse illustrates principles using Pascal programs that have 
been tested on several compilers. I endorse this strategy; 
others have used pseudolanguages. For people using 
Pascal, the book is eminently useful and educational. You 
can enter the programs and try your own modifications. 

The book contains many in-depth examples of applica¬ 
tions of data structures to programming problems. 
Realistic examples include Conway's game of Life, a text¬ 
indexing program, and a program that evaluates mathe¬ 
matic expressions. 

1 lost count of the number of times 1 came across 
valuable nuggets of information or explanations that 
clarified concepts I had read about in other books but 
failed to understand. Where other authors simply use 
pointers, Kruse discusses how pointers can be created 
even in languages in which they are not implemented. 

It is apparent that much of Kruse's time preparing this 
text was spent trying it out on students, polishing the 
prose, and clarifying important points. This book stands 
head and shoulders above others in making difficult con¬ 
cepts understandable. 

Unfortunately while Kruse covers most of the fundamen¬ 
tal data structures I expected, he does not include a 
chapter on graphs. Graphs are an important data struc¬ 
ture different enough from other data structures so as to 
require individual consideration. They have significant 
practical applications for scheduling programs, flow pro¬ 
grams, and trip planning. 

Data Structures and Program Design excellently covers data 
structures and algorithms for operating on them. Kruse 
is readable, covers topics in great depth, and does so 
without losing the reader. 1 recommend the book for a 
second course in any formal computer curriculum or as 
a resource and reference book for programmers who seek 
to improve their programming skills on their own. ■ 

Edward B rent, an associate professor of sociology and family and com¬ 
munity medicine (108 Sociology. University of Missouri, Columbia, 
MO 65211), has recently completed a post-doctorate fellowship in 
which he studied the role of data structures in artificial-intelligence 
programming. 


78 B Y T E • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 115 










































PEKOHNEl FILE 


HEaiHEF SMITH 
26 RIDEOUT SP. 
HOLLIS 


Phone 617-882-6531 
Social Security NimEei 
fate of hire 4/18/84 


Job title SECRETARY 
E<Jicat:on BACHELOR 




3-' *xi 


r you can open up a whole 
new dimension in data base 
applications by merging real-life 
pictures with popular data base 
management systems. Pictures 
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who have authorized clearance to 
limited access areas. A data base 
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personnel records can be searched 
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verification. 

Signature Verification — increase 
the efficiency of credit checks by 
adding pictures of customer 
signatures to your financial data 
base records. 

Real Estate — add pictures of 
houses to on-line real estate 
listings for faster property identifi¬ 
cation and improved sales 
presentations. 

Electronic Cataloging — pictures 
of products can be combined with a 
data base system containing pro¬ 
duct specifications, pricing, 
availability and much more. 


Customers, distributors and: 
personnel can quickly! 
and view the resulting product/ 
picture information on one screen. 
Files can be updated easily, 
quickly. 


of text, photos, t 
3-dimensional objects with an 
ordinary video camera and our 
high resolution PC-EYE™ video 
digitizer. Pop back into your data 
base system and add the picture 
name to your data base like you 
would any other piece of 
information. The full functionality of 
the data base system is preserved, 
but the resulting display is text and 
picture information on one screen. 

Pictures are displayed in the upper 
right quadrant of the screen at a 
resolution of 320 x 200 with 16 
colors or levels of gray. Text 
information from data base records 
fills the rest of the screen. Pictures 
can also be exploded to full screen. 

Call or write and we will send you 
information on PHOTOBASE, 
PC-EYE, compatible cameras and 
other imaging equipment in the 
Chorus Family of products. 
(603)424-2900 or 
1-800-OCHORUS. 

TM PHOTOBASE and PC-EYE are trademarks of 
CHORUS Data Systems. 

•dBase II is a trademark of Ashton-Tate; R-Base 
4000 is a trademark of Microrim, Inc.; IBM Filing 
Assistant is a trademark of International Business 
Machines Corporation. 


CHORUS 


CHORUS Data Systems, Inc., 6 Continental Blvd., P.O. Box 370, Merrimack, New Hampshire 03054 















SHE’S TEMPORARY 

THE DAMAGE IS PERMANENT. 


One wrong key. 

The slightest slip. 

And your accounts receivable 
are accounts irretrievable. 

It can happen to you-because 
a leading cause of data loss is 
human error. If you employ people 
and computers, you’re vulnerable. 

Unless you backup your data. 

Every day. 

No matter what. 


The smartest way to do that 
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Mass Storage System. 



Shown above, the 20 megabyte HardFile 
with 20 megabyte tape for $2,995. 


TALLGRASS SELLS MORE 
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CARTRIDGE TAPE BACKUP 
THAN ANYONE IN THE WORLD. 

Tallgrass took the industry’s 
most reliable medium—magnetic 
tape-and perfected a format 
that’s become the standard for 
personal computers. 

We used a removable tape 
cartridge to store data out of 


80 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 







Irt 



harm’s way. And made two ver¬ 
sions. Our 3000 Series HardFiles 
combine tape’s accuracy with 
the enormous capacities of hard 
disk, providing 12,20,35 or 70 
megabytes storage with a remov¬ 
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megabytes of backup capacity. 



Result: the world’s best selling 
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The only kind to have when 
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For a free brochure, yo 
nearest dealer, and more 
good reasons to backup, 
call 1-800-228-DISK. And 
solve your problems 
permanently. 


TALLGRASS 

TECHNOLOGIES 


COMMITTED TO MEMORY 

Inquiry 307 


HardFile"* and Tallgrass* are trademarks of 

Tallgrass Technologies Corporation. ® 1984 Tallgrass Technologies. 











THE PROFESSIONAL’S CHOICE 


Lotus 

1-2-3 

*299 


Lotus 

Symphony 

*419 


dBase III 

Framework 

MultiMate 

*339 

*339 

*889 


WordStar 

2000 + 

*319 


Software 

Word Processing Editors 

EASYWRITER II 
SYSTEM 
FANCY FONT 
FINAL WORD 
MICROSOFT WORD 
MICROSOFT WORD 
W/MOUSE 
MULTIMATE 
PFS: WRITE 
SAMNA WORD III 
VOLKSWRITER 
DELUXE 
VOLKSWRITER 
SCIENTIFIC 
THE WORD PLUS 
(OASIS) 

WORD PERFECT 
WORDPLUS W/BOSS 
WORDSTAR 
WORDSTAR 2000 
WORDSTAR 2000+ 
WORDSTAR 
PROFESSIONAL 
XYWRITE 11+ 

Spreadsheets/ 

Integrated Packages 

ELECTRIC DESK 
ENABLE 
FRAMEWORK 
LOTUS 1-2-3 
MULTIPLAN 
OPEN ACCESS 
SMART SYSTEM 
SPREADSHEET 
AUDITOR $ 79 

SUPERCALC 3 $199 

SYMPHONY $419 

TKI SOLVER $269 


$219 

$139 

$189 

$239 

$289 
$259 
$ 95 
$C«II 

$159 

$309 

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$199 

$269 

$319 

$259 

$229 


$209 

$459 

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$299 

$135 

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$559 


Desktop 

Environments 

DESK ORGANIZER 
GET ORGANIZED 
SIDEKICK 
SPOTLIGHT 

Communications/ 
Productivity Tools 

CROSSTALK 

PROKEY 

RELAY 

SMARTCOM II 


Samna 
Word III 

‘CALL 


$129 
$159 
$ 45 
$109 


$105 
$ 89 
$ 99 
$109 


Database Systems 

ALPHA DATA BASE 
MANAGER II 
CLOUT V 2.0 
CONDOR III 
DBASE II 
DBASE III 
INFOSTAR+ 
KNOWLEDGEMAN 
PFS: FILE/PFS: 

REPORT 
POWERBASE 
QUICKCODE III 
R BASE 4000 

Languages/Utilities 

CONCURRENT DOS 
C86 C COMPILER 
DIGITAL RESEARCH 
C COMPILER 
DR FORTRAN 77 
LATTICE C COMPILER 
MICROSOFT C 
COMPILER 
MS BASIC COMPILER 
MS FORTRAN 
NORTON UTILITIES— 

new 

TURBO PASCAL 

Project 

Management 

HARVARD PROJECT 
MANAGER 
HARVARD TOTAL 
PROJECT MANAGER 
MICROSOFT 
PROJECT 
SCITOR PROJECT 
5000 W/GRAPHICS 

Professional 

Development 

MANAGEMENT EDGE 
SALES EDGE 
THINK TANK 

Home/Personal 

Finance 

DOLLARS AND 
SENSE 
FINANCIER II 
HOWARD TAX 
PREPARER 85 
MICROTAX 
MANAGING YOUR 
MONEY 


$179 

$139 

$299 

$269 

$339 

$319 

$269 

$169 

$219 

$169 

$259 


$189 

$299 

$219 

$219 

$Call 

$309 

$249 

$239 

$CaM 

$45 


$219 

$299 

$159 

$289 


$159 

$159 

$119 


$119 

$119 


$195 

$C«N 


Graphics/Statistics 

ABSTAT $279 

AUTOCAD $C«N 

BPS BUSINESS 
GRAPHICS $229 

CHARTMASTER $239 

CHARTSTAR $209 

DR DRAW $199 

ENERGRAPHICS W/ 

PLOTTER $279 

EXECUVISION $259 

GRAPHWRITER 
COMBO $389 

MS CHART $159 

OVERHEAD 

EXPRESS $139 

PC DRAW $259 

PC PAINTBRUSH $ 89 

PFS: GRAPH $ 95 

SIGNMASTER $179 

STATPRO $Call 

STATPAK-NWA $329 

STATPAC-WALONICK $299 

Accounting Modules 

BPI $329 

GREAT PLAINS $479 

IUS EASYBUSINESS $309 

MBA $369 

OPEN SYSTEMS $399 

PEACHTREE $299 

REAL WORLD $469 

STATE OF THE ART $389 

STAR ACCOUNTING 
PARTNER $249 

STAR ACCOUNTING 
PARTNER II $599 

Hardware * 

Multifunction Boards 

AST ADVANTAGE $C«N 

AST 6 PAK PLUS (64K) $249 

AST 6 PAK PLUS 
(384K) $449 

AST MEGAPLUS II (64K) $269 

AST MEGAPAK (256K) $349 

QUADBOARD (64K) $269 

OUADBOARD (256K) $399 

QUADBOARD EXP. 

(64K) $269 

QUADBOARD EXP. 

(384K) $469 

QUAD 512 + (64K) $269 

ORCHID BLOSSOM $C«N 

PERSYST $CaM 

TECMAR CAPTAIN(64K) $279 

TECMAR WAVE (64K) $209 


Display Boards 

AST MONOGRAPH PLUS $CMi 
EVEREX GRAPHICS 
EDGE $419 

HERCULES GRAPHICS 
CARD $329 

HERCULES COLOR 
CARD $179 

PARADISE MODULAR 
GRAPHICS CARD $285 
PARADISE 

MULTIDISPLAY CARD $285 


PERSYST 
PLANTRONICS 
COLORPLUS 
PRINCETON SCAN 
DOUBLER 
STB GRAPHICS 
PLUS II 

TECMAR GRAPHICS 
MASTER 


$CaJI 

$419 


$CaN 

$309 


Printers/Plotters 

AMPLOT II 
C. ITOH 
COMWRITER II 
COMWRITER 420 
DIABLO 620/630 
EPSON FX-100+ 
EPSON LQ-1500 
EPSON JX-80 
JUKI 6100 
NEC P3 
NEC 2050 
NEC 3550 
OKIDATA 84P 
OKIDATA 93P 
QUME SPRINT 1155 
TOSHIBA PI351 
SWEET P 6 PEN 
PLOTTER 


$489 Emulation Boards 


TECMAR VIDEO VAN 


ASTPCOX 

GOGH 

$259 

AST 3780 

TSENG ULTRA PAK 

$449 

AST SNA 

AST BSC 

Displays 


BLUE LYNX 

AMDEK 300G/300A 

$139/149 

CXI 3278/9 

AMDEK 310A 

$179 

IRMA 

AMDEK COLOR II + 

$459 

IRMALINE 

PRINCETON HX-12 

$469 

IRMAPRINT 

PRINCETON MAX-12 

$179 

QUAD 3278 

PRINCETON SR-12 

$c«a 

Input Devices 

QUADRAM 


$859 

$CaM 

$C*N 

$CaN 

$CaN 

$C«H 

$CaH 

$CaN 

$419 

$899 

$769 

$1399 

$729 

$619 

$1569 

$1279 

$899 


$949 
$609 
$689 
$ 29 
$CaM 
S Call 
$869 
$999 
$Call 
$949 


AMBERCHROME 
ZENITH 124 AMBER 
ZENITH 135 COLOR 

Modems 

AST REACH 1200 
HAYES 1200 
HAYES 1200B 
HAYES 2400 
VENTEL 1200 
HALF CARD 


$179 

$145 

$C«R 


$CaH 

$459 

$399 

$CaM 

$Cai 


Accessories 

CURTIS SURGE 
PROTECTORS $CaN 

EPD SURGE 

PROTECTORS $C«M 

GILTRONIX A/B SWITCH $CaM 
MICROBUFFER INLINE 
(64K) $264 

MICROFAZER INLINE 
(64K) $219 

64K RAM SET $40 

256K RAM SET $CaN 

8087 MATH $150 


KEYTRONIC 5151 
MICROSOFT 
MOUSE 

PC MOUSE W/PAINT 

Mass Storage 

ALLOY PC-BACKUP 
20MB 

ALLOY PC-DISC 
20MB 

IOMEGA 10+10 MB 
MAYNARD WS-1 10MB 
SIGMA 

SYSGENIMAGE 
TALLGRASS HARDFILE 
+ TAPE 

TEAC HALF HEIGHT 


$189 


$139 

$159 


$1649 

$1769 

$2895 

$Ca« 

$CaM 

$C«N 

$CaM 

$159 


Networks 

AST PC NET $CaN 

CORVUS NET $C«N 

DIGITAL RESEARCH 
STARLINK $1199 

ORCHID PC NET $CaN 

•CALL FOR SHIPPING COSTS 


Chart-Master 

*839 



AST 6 Pak 
Plus 

*849 


LOWEST PRICE 
GUARANTEE!! 

We will match current 
nationally advertised 
prices on most products. 
Call and compare. 


Quad Board 

Smartmodem 

Smartmodem 

Expanded64K 

1200B 

1200 

*869 

*399 

*489 



Diskette 
Library 
Case 
with your order 



TERMS: 

Checks—allow 14 days to clear Credit processing—add 3%. COD orders—cash. 

M O or certified check—add $3.00. Shipping and handling UPS surface—add $3.00 
per item (UPS Blue $6.00 per item). NY State Residents—add applicable sales tax 
All prices subject to change. 


isao-22'i-ieea 

In New York State call (718) 438-6057 


MON.-THURS. 9:00AM-8:00PM 
SUN. & FRI. 9:00AM-4:00 PM 



Softline Corporation 
P.O. Box 729, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11230 
TELEX: 421047 ATLN Ul 


82 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 283 





















EVENT QUEUE 


February 1985 

• Al, EXPERT SYSTEM 
BRIEFING— Artificial In- 
telligence and Expert Sys¬ 
tems: What Business Must 
Know Today to Reap the 
Benefits Tomorrow, Marriott 
Copley Place. Boston. MA. A 
one-day executive briefing. 
The fee is $790. Contact Lee 
Burgess. Professional 
Development Programs. 
Rensselaer Polytechnic In¬ 
stitute. TYoy Building. New 
York. NY 12180-3590. (518) 
266-6589. February 11 

• SOFTWARE MANAGE¬ 
MENT CONTROL-Con- 
figuration Management of 
Software Programs. San 
Diego. CA. Intended to show 
those working in software 
management how to control 
development, maintenance, 
and operational costs. The 
cost is $730. Contact Stod 
Cortelyou. Continuing 
Engineering Education. 
George Washington Univer¬ 
sity. Washington, DC 20052, 
(800) 424-9773; in the 
District of Columbia. (202) 
676-8520. February 11-13 

• NETWORK COMPO¬ 
NENTS EXPLAINED— Data 
Communications Network 
Components. Atlanta. GA. A 
thorough overview of the 
use. operation, applications, 
and acquisition procedures 
of 25 major communications 
components. The fee is 
$795. Contact Elaine Had¬ 
den Nicholas. Department of 
Continuing Education, 
Georgia Institute of Tech¬ 
nology, Atlanta, GA 30332- 
0385. (404) 894-2 547. 

February 12-14 

• INTERACTIVE 
INSTRUCTION— The Third 
Conference on Interactive In¬ 
struction Delivery. Sheraton 


Towers Hotel. Orlando. FL. 
Contact the Society for Ap¬ 
plied Learning Technology. 

50 Culpeper St.. Warrenton. 
VA 22186, (703) 347-0055. 
February 13-15 

• COMPUTERS FILL 
EDUCATORS' TALL ORDER 
The Fifth Annual Conference 
of the Texas Computer 
Education Association, Hyatt 
Regency Hotel. Austin. TX. 
The theme is "New Direc¬ 
tions for Education Using 
Modern Day Technology." 
Contact TCEA Conference, 
POB 2 573. Austin. TX 
78768. February 13-16 

• PC SYMPOSIUM 
The 1984 UNM Personal 
Computer Symposium. Uni¬ 
versity of New Mexico. Albu¬ 
querque. Exhibits, seminars, 
and demonstrations of per¬ 
sonal computer systems for 
business, education, and 
professional offices. Contact 
the Teu Beta Pi Honor Soci¬ 
ety. c/o Dr. Randy TVuman. 
Department of Mechanical 
Engineering, University of 
New Mexico. Albuquerque. 
NM 87131. (505) 277-6296. 
February 15-16 

• COCO CONVOCATION 
RainbowFest, Irvine Marriott, 
Irvine. CA. A show for users 
of the Radio Shack TRS-80 
Color Computer. More than 
50 exhibitors are expected. 
Contact Falsoft Inc., POB 
385, Prospect. KY 40059. 
(502) 228-4492. 

February 15-17 

• MICROS FOR EDU¬ 
CATORS— Association of 


Tfcacher Educators National 
Conference. Riviera Conven¬ 
tion and Resort Hotel. Las 
Vegas. NV. Exhibits and 
demonstrations of micro¬ 
computers. microcomputer 
products, and communica¬ 
tions equipment will be 
featured. Contact Peter C. 
West, Learning Center. Col¬ 
lege of Education, Gabel 
Hall 8, Northern Illinois 
University. DeKalb, IL 60115, 
(815) 753-1241. 

February 18-19 

• MANAGE YOUR COM¬ 
PUTER— Managing Com¬ 
puter Resources. Winter- 
green Learning Institute, 
Wintergreen. VA. Focuses on 
networking, system design, 
performance evaluation, and 
operational difficulties en¬ 
countered by managers and 
executives. Rates vary from 
$570 to $769, depending on 
accommodations. Contact 
Dr. M. D. Corcoran. Winter- 
green Learning Institute. 

POB 7, Wintergreen. VA 
22958. (800) 325-2200; in 
Virginia. (804) 32 5-1107. 
February 18-22 

• COMMUNICATIONS FOR 
EXECS— Info/Central. O'Hare 
Exposition Center. Chicago. 
IL. A computer and commu¬ 
nications show and con¬ 
ference for executives and 
data-processing managers. 
Topics: mainframes, micro¬ 
computers. telecommunica¬ 
tions systems, and micro¬ 
graphics. Contact the Show 
Manager, Info/Central. 999 
Summer St.. Stamford. CT 
06905. (203) 964-8287. 
February 20-22 


• MODULA-2 ENGI¬ 
NEER IN G— Soft wa re 
Engineering with Modula-2. 
Atlanta. GA. A course 
emphasizing methods for 
building large-scale software 
systems in Modula-2. Pre¬ 
requisite: knowledge of Ada 
or Pascal. The fee is $495. 
Contact Elaine Hadden 
Nicholas. Department of 
Continuing Education. 

Georgia Institute of Tech¬ 
nology, Atlanta, GA 30332- 
0385. (404) 894-2 547. 

February 20-22 

• BUSINESS GRAPHICS 
Computer Business Graph¬ 
ics. Bonaventure Intercon¬ 
tinental Hotel. Fort Lauder¬ 
dale. FL. Contact Carol 
Every. Frost & Sullivan Inc.. 
106 Fulton St.. New York. 

NY 10038. (212) 233-1080. 
February 20-23 

• MAC IN SPOTLIGHT 

MacWorld Exposition, 

Brooks Hall, San Francisco. 
CA. A hands-on festival of 
Macintosh hardware, soft¬ 
ware. and peripherals. Con¬ 
tact World Expositions. 

Mitch Hall Associates. POB 
860. Westwood. MA 02090. 
(617) 329-7466. 

February 21-23 

• COMPUTER FAIRE 

The Fourth Annual IEEE 
Computer Faire. Huntsville, 
AL. Sponsored by the In¬ 
stitute of Electrical and Elec¬ 
tronics Engineers. Contact 
Tferry Mizell. POB 5188. 
Huntsville. AL 3 5805. (205) 
532-2036. February 22-23 

• COMPUTERS IN MEXICO 

The First International Com¬ 
puter and Communications 
Exposition and Conference: 
MexCom '85. Mexico City. 

( continued ) 


IF YOU WANT your organization's public activities listed in BYTE's Event 
Queue, we need to know about them at least four months in advance. Send 
information about computer conferences, seminars, workshops, and courses 
to BYTE. Event Queue. POB 372. Hancock. NH 03449. 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 83 








Inquiry 309 



micRo-TGRm, me. 

Call toll-free 1-800-325-9056 

512 Rudder Road 

Fenton (St. Louis County), Missouri 63026 


Special Offer 




ERGO" 4000 is the ASCII Terminal featuring 
80-column by 66-line format for full-page dis¬ 
play capability. Features include: 15 down¬ 
loadable function keys, four video attributes, 
pass-through printer port, screen saver, 
alternate character generator, settable tabs, 
24-line display, and user-definable custom 
mode. (Compatible with VT100 codes.) Most 
popular word processing packages are 
already modified to run on the ERGO" 4000. 


COMPETITIVE EDGE 

P.O. Box 556 • Plymouth, MI 48170 • (313) 451-0665 

THUNDER 186™ SYSTEM.$1995. 

Includes 256K RAM, 2-5” Floppys and concurrent DOS® 
expandable to 10 or 40 MB hard disk & up to 4 users. 
TELETEK SYSTEM ASTER II® SYSTEM ..$5895. 

With 2 Hi-speed 128K banked slaves, 10MB hard disk and two 
Qume 102 terminals. 

Includes fastest Z80 slaves available. 

WE INTEGRA TE SYSTEMS 
WITH THE FOLLOWING COMPONENTS 

CompuPro® Lomas Data Products 


Teletek 

Sample Component Prices 

CompuPro 286 with 287 chip CPU.$1199. 

Disk 1A . . .$459. RAM 22 . . .$995. I/O 4 . . .$297. 
CPUZ™ . . .$215. 85/88 . . .$327. RAM 23-64™ . . .$309. 
LDP 286 . . .$1116. LDP Hi-speed 512K . . .$899. 

Color Magic™ . . .$496. Thunder 186™ . . .$1195. 

Teletek Systemaster II® 8MHZZ80.$899. 

Teletek HDCTC® Hard Disk Controller.$525. 

QUME 102 GR . . .$450. C. 1TOH 8510 PTR . . .$350. 

DRI FORTRAN . . .$250. COMP. Inovation C . . .$299. 


All prices subject to change and 
stock on hand shipping extra min. $3. 

ALL PRICES CASH PRICES 

Concurrent DOS is registered treademark of Digital Research Inc. RAM 23, CPU 
286/287, CPU Z, RAM 22, are trademarks of CompuPro a Godbout Company. 
Thunder 186, Color Magic trademarks of LDP Inc. Systemaster II & HDCTC are 
registered trademarks of Teletek Enterprises Inc. 


EVENT 


Mexico. This show features 
mini- and microcomputers, 
software, office automation 
equipment, and communica¬ 
tions exhibits. Contact Mex- 
Com, Suite 219, 3421 M St. 
NW. Washington. DC 20007, 
(703) 685-0600. 

February 25-28 

• FARM AUTOMATION 

Agri-Mation, Palmer House 
Hotel, Chicago, IL. This con¬ 
ference and exposition will 
focus on the role of automa¬ 
tion in agriculture. Contact 
the Society of Manufacturing 
Engineers. One SME Dr.. 

POB 930, Dearborn. Ml 
48121, (313) 271-1500. 

February 25-28 

• DYNAMIC COMPUTING 

Dynamics on Microcom¬ 
puters. University of Michi¬ 
gan, Dearborn. A course 
and workshop for engineers. 
Contact Professor R. E. 

Little, University of 
Michigan. 4901 Evergreen 
Rd., Dearborn. MI 48128, 
(313) 593-5241. 

February 25-M arch 1 

• HIGH-TECH IN FOCUS 

High-Tbch '85 Exhibit and 
Seminar, Thunderbird Motel, 
Bloomington, MN. More 
than 100 manufacturers will 
exhibit terminals, periph¬ 
erals. data-communications 
equipment, and digital test 
instruments. Admission is 
free. Contact John Bastys or 
Barb Mueller, Countryman 
Associates Co.. 1821 Univer¬ 
sity Ave.. St. Paul. MN 
55104, (612) 645-9151. 
February 26-27 

• MICRO-AIDED MANAGE¬ 
MENT— Microcomputer- 
aided Maintenance Manage¬ 
ment System. Ramada Inn. 
Airport, Milwaukee. Wl. This 
course shows how com¬ 
puters can help improve the 
maintenance functions of 
any organization. The fee is 
$60. Contact Unik Asso¬ 
ciates, 12 545 West Burleigh. 
Brookfield. Wl 53005, (414) 
782-5030. February 27 


QUEUE 


M arch 1985 

• DISCOVER UNIX 

Discover UNIX, various sites 
throughout the U.S. A two- 
day seminar exploring such 
topics as the UNIX file 
system, shell interpreter, text 
editors, programming lan¬ 
guages. and system tools. 

The fee is $595. Contact 
Data-Tfech Institute. 57 Lake- 
view Plaza, POB 2429, Clif¬ 
ton. NJ 07015, (201) 
478-5400. March 

• COMPUTERS FOR SALE 
Computer Supermarket. San 
Mateo County Fairgrounds. 
San Mateo. CA. A gathering 
of retailers, manufacturers, 
distributors, and potential 
consumers of a wide variety 
of computer-related prod¬ 
ucts. Contact Microshows. 
Suite 203, 1209 Donnelly 
Ave., Burlingame, CA 94010, 
(415) 340-9113. March 2-3 

• FOSE SOFTWARE SHOW 
Federal Office Systems Ex¬ 
position (FOSE) Software 
'85. Convention Center. 
Washington. DC. Workshops, 
symposia, and exhibits of 
software. Contact Rosalind 
Boesch, National Drade Pro¬ 
ductions Inc., Suite 400, 

2111 Eisenhower Ave., Alex¬ 
andria, VA 22314, (800) 
638-8510; in Virginia. (703) 
683-8500. March 4-7 

• MINI/MICRO 

Mini/Micro Southeast-85, 
Georgia World Congress 
Center, Atlanta. A con¬ 
ference and exposition. Con¬ 
tact Electronic Conventions 
Management. 8110 Airport 
Blvd., Los Angeles. CA 
90045, (213) 772-2965. 

March 5-7 

• DESIGN SHOW 

The 1985 National Design 
Engineering Show, McCor¬ 
mick Place. Chicago. IL. 

More than 600 CAD/CAM 
system and electronic com¬ 
ponent companies will ex¬ 
hibit. Contact the Show 
Manager. National Design 


84 B Y T E • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 54 




















EVENT QUEUE 


Engineering Show, 999 Sum¬ 
mer St.. Stamford. CT 06905. 
(203) 964-0000. M arch 11-14 

• DATACOMM FROM ALL 
ANGLES—Data Communica¬ 
tions: Technology. Tech¬ 
niques. and Applications. 
Thrrytown Hilton, Thrrytown. 
NY. This seminar covers 
existing and emerging 
technologies, data compres¬ 
sion techniques and applica¬ 
tions. multiplexers, protocol 
conversion, data security, 
and local-area networks. The 
fee is $150. Contact Glasgai 
Communications Inc.. 207 
Washington St., Northvale. 

NJ 07647. (201) 768-8082. 
March 12 

• ACM COMPUTER 
CONFERENCE-The Thir¬ 
teenth Annual ACM Com¬ 
puter Science Conference: 
CSC '85. New Orleans Mar¬ 
riott. LA. An employment 
register, social events, 
technical programs, award 
presentations, and exhibits 
are highlights of this show. 
Contact Della T. Bonnette, 
Conference Chair. Com¬ 
puting and Information Ser¬ 
vices. University of South¬ 
western Louisiana. Lafayette. 
LA 70504. (318) 231-6306. 
March 12-14 

• EDUCATIONAL 
CONFERENCE-The 1985 
Microcomputers in Educa¬ 
tion Conference. Arizona 
State University. Tfempe. The 
theme for this conference is 
"Tbmorrow's Technology.” 
Emphasis will be placed on 
integrating computer tech¬ 
nology and languages into 
the educational environ¬ 
ment. Exhibits will be 
featured. Contact Donna 
Craighead. Payne B47. 
Arizona State University. 
College of Education. 

Tfempe. AZ 85287. (602) 
965-7363. March 13-15 

• SIMULATION IN 
SUNSHINE-The Eighteenth 
Annual Simulation Sym¬ 
posium' Thmpa, FL. A forum 


for the interchange of ideas, 
techniques, and applications 
among those working in 
simulation. Contact Alex¬ 
ander Kran. IBM Corp.. East 
Fishkill Facility. Hopewell 
junction. NY 12533. 

March 13-15 

• INTERFACING 
WORKSHOP—Personal Com¬ 
puter and STD Computer In¬ 
terfacing for Scientific Instru¬ 
ment Automation. Virginia 
Tfcch, Blacksburg. A hands- 
on workshop with partici¬ 
pants wiring and testing in¬ 
terfaces. The fee is $450. 
Contact Dr. Linda Leffel, 
C.E.C.. Virginia Polytechnic 
Institute and State Univer¬ 
sity. Blacksburg. VA 24061. 
(703) 961-4848. March 14-16 

• SHOW IN DELAWARE 
The Seventh Annual 
Delaware Computer Faire. 
Delaware State College. 
Dover. Current technology 
for use in the classroom, of¬ 
fice. and home will be dis¬ 
played. Workshops, demon¬ 
strations. and sessions on 
the use of computers in the 
classroom are planned. Con¬ 
tact Dr. William J. Geppert, 
State Supervisor. Mathe¬ 
matics, Department of 
Public Instruction. Townsend 
Building, POB 1402. Dover, 
DE 19903. (302) 736-4885. 
March 16 

• CLASSROOM 
COMPUTING TECHNIQUES 

Instructional Strategies for 
Integrating the Microcom¬ 
puter into the Classroom. 
University of Wisconsin. 
Madison. A special em¬ 
phasis is placed on strate¬ 
gies that have already 
proved successful. Hands-on 
sessions will be offered. 
Contact Dr. Judith Roden- 
stein or Dr. Roger Lambert. 
University of Wisconsin. 964 
Educational Sciences Build¬ 
ing, 1025 West johnson St.. 
Madison. WI 53706. (608) 
263-4367 or 263-2704. 

March 18-19 

( continued ) 


100% FLAWLESS 
COPIES . . . 

. . .FAST! 


No need to tie up your valuable computer to duplicate 
diskettes . . . when VICTORY can provide you with a 
duplicator that will do the job flawlessly, and much 
faster. One button operation automatically formats, 
duplicates and verifies up to 8 diskette copies at the 
same time. 



VICTORY can supply you with literally dozens of 
standardized formats to match the protocol of virtually 
any current computer. In addi¬ 
tion, built-in utilities enable 
you to read or devise any for¬ 
mat you may require. If that’s 
not enough, VICTORY can 
help you with unusual or 
unique formatting, serializing 
or copy-protecting problems. 

VICTORY duplicators are 
designed to be reliable. Each 
of the copy drives has a 
separate controller to increase 
copying throughput and 
ensure maximum uptime. 

VICTORY Duplicators use 
industry proven drives com¬ 
bined with 100% digital tech¬ 
nology . . . there are no 
analog circuits to slowly drift 
out of tolerance. 


Let us help free you from 
your disk-duplicating bottle¬ 
neck at a surprisingly 
attractive price. Write or call: 
VICTORY ENTERPRISES 
TECHNOLOGY, INC., 8910 
Research Blvd., Suite B2, 
Austin, Texas 78758— 
(512)450-0801. 


Victory Enterprises 
Technology, Inc. 


Inquiry 323 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 85 
















Inquiry 22 


EVENT QUEUE 


The Little Board™... $349*' 

The world’s simplest and least expensive CP/M computer 









\0 






CP/M 2.2 

INCLUDED 


'UNDER $200 IN 
OEM QUANTITIES 


Z80A is a registered trademark of Zilog, Inc 
CP/M is a registered trademark of Digital Research 


• 4 MHz Z80A CPU, 64K RAM, Z80A CTC, 2732 Boot ROM 

• Mini/Micro Floppy controller (1-4 Drives, Singlc/Double Density, 1-2 sided, 40/80 track) 

• Only 5.75 x 7.75 inches, mounts directly to a 5 1/4" floppy drive 

• 2 RS232C Serial Ports (75-9600 baud & 75-38,400 baud), 1 Centronics Printer Port 

• Power Requirement: 5VDC at .75A; • 12VDC at 0SA/On-board 12V converter 

• CP/M 2.2 BOOS • ZCPR3 CCP • Enhanced AMPRO BIOS 

• AMPRO Utilities included: 

• read/write to more than 2 dozen other formats (Kaypro, Televldeo, IBM CP/M86....) 

• format disks for more than a dozen other computers 

• menu-based system customization DISTRIBUTORS 


• BIOS and Utilities Source Code Available 

• SCSI/PIUS Adapter : 

• Mounts directly to Little Board 

• Slave I/O board control • Full ANSC X3T9.2 

• 16 bidirectional I/O lines • $99/Quantity 1 


Argentina-Factorial, SA 1-41-0018 

Australia ASP Microcomputers 613-500-0628 

Belgium-Centre Electronique Lempereur 041-23-45-41 


Vv 

V67 


COMPUTERS INCORPORATED 


Canada-Electronic Sales Assoc 
Denmark-Danbit 
England-Quant Systems 
Finland-Symmetric OY 
France-AJam Lequeux 
Israel-Alpha Terminals 
Spam-Xemos Informatica 
Sweden-AB AKTA 
USA Digital Distributors (CA) 
Peripheral Business Systems (WA) 
Dorado Business Systems (NY/NJ) 


(604) 986-5447 
03-66-20-20 
01-534-3158 
358-0-585 322 
1 525-6960 
03-491695 
3-593-0822 
08-54-20-20 
408-423 1556 
206-823-6661 
609 429-2243 


East Evelyn Ave. • Mountain View, CA94041 • (415)962-0230* TELEX 4940302 


J 



Bonk on BVTCH's 

(€)PROM MultiProgrommer System S15-G 
With Less Restrictions 5i o FR€€ KCVBORRD 
for Only $995. 

Stand Alone or Hook Up to your Terminal, 

3 Voltage Devices, Simulation Module, 
Supports Bipolar, PALs, 40 Pin Chips. 

Also Available: S5 Basic (E)PR0M 
Programmer, $690. UV Erasers from $67. 


fannHiaPcOMPUTEft SYSTEMS corporation 


4089 South Rogers Circle, Boco Roton, Ft 33431 

CALL TO ORDER (305) 994-3520, Telex 4310073 M6VI3TC 
Distributor Inquiries Welcome 


• EXPOSING THE MYTH 
OF MICROS—Public Aware¬ 
ness Seminars, Hyatt Regen¬ 
cy, Los Angeles, CA. A 
seminar that shows nontech¬ 
nical businesspeople how a 
microcomputer could be 
used to increase productivi¬ 
ty. Contact International 
Microcomputer Industries 
Association, Suite 175. 21 
T^mal Vista Blvd.. Corte 
Madera. CA 9492 5, (415) 
924-1194. March 18-19 

• COMPUTERS AND 
TELECOMMUNICATIONS 

COMTEL '85: International 
Computer and Telecommuni¬ 
cations Conference, Info- 
mart, Dallas, TX. Contact 
COMTEL '85. Suite 600, 
13740 Midway Rd., Dallas. 

TX 75244. (214) 458-7011. 

M arch 18-20 

• TECHNOLOGY AND 
EDUCATION—The First An¬ 
nual Conference on Technol¬ 
ogies in Education. Univer¬ 
sity of Arizona. Tticson. This 
conference will focus on the 
effective implementation of 
research in educational 
technology. Contact Steve 
Louie. NACC1S. Suite 12 5. 
2200 East River Rd.. Tlicson. 
AZ 85718. (602) 323-6144. 
March 18-20 

• ROBOTICS TECHNOLOGY 
UPDATE—The Second An¬ 
nual Robotic End Effectors: 
Design and Applications 
Seminar, Holiday Inn 
Livonia-West, Livonia. MI. 
More than 25 companies 
will exhibit. Contact lohn 
McEachran. Special Pro¬ 
grams Department. Society 
of Manufacturing Engineers. 
One SME Dr.. POB 930. 
Dearborn. MI 48121. (313) 
271-1500, ext. 382. 

March 19-20 

• Al FOR ROBOTS 

Aircon 2: The Second An¬ 
nual International Con¬ 
ference on Artificial In¬ 
telligence for Robots, Stouf- 
fers Concourse in Crystal 
City, Arlington, VA. A con¬ 


ference designed to pro¬ 
mote a dialogue between 
experts and users of arti¬ 
ficial-intelligence systems. 

The theme is "Tbward In¬ 
telligent Robots: The Droids 
Are Coming.'' Contact Cindy 
Mega, IIT Research Institute. 
10 West 3 5th St.. Chicago. IL 
60616. (312) 567-4024. 

March 21-22 

• EDUCATION AND 
COMPUTING—Educational 
Computing Tbday, Westin 
Hotel. Renaissance Center. 
Detroit. MI. Kindergarten, 
elementary, high school, and 
college educators will share 
educational computing ex¬ 
periences. Contact Michigan 
Association for Computer 
Users in Learning, 
MACUL/ICCE Conference. 

POB 628. Westland. MI 
48185. (313) 595-2493. 

March 21-22 

• ELEMENTARY 
COMPUTING-University of 
Delaware Second National 
Conference: Computers and 
Young Children, University 
of Delaware. Newark. The 
emphasis is on programs for 
children 4 to 8 years of age. 
Contact Dr. Richard B. 

Fischer, Division of Continu¬ 
ing Education. University of 
Delaware, Newark. DE 
19716. (302) 451-8838. 

March 21-22 

• WINTER COMDEX 

COMDEX/Winter. Convention 
Center, Anaheim, CA. One 
of the largest shows in the 
microcomputer industry. 
Contact The Interface Group, 
300 First Ave., Needham. 

MA 02194, (800) 32 5-3330: 
in Massachusetts, (617) 
449-6660. March 21-24 

• DATABASE SYMPOSIUM 
The Fourth Annual ACM 
SIGACT/SIGMOD Symposium 
on Principles of Database 
Systems, Portland. OR. This 
conference covers develop¬ 
ments in the theoretical and 
practical aspects of database 

( continued ) 


86 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 37 
























Introducing the Most Powerful 
Business Software Ever! 


TRS-80™ (Model I, II, III, or 16) • APPLE™ • IBM™ • OSBORNE™ • CP/M™ • XEROX™ 




The VersaBusiness" Series 

Each VersaBusiness module can be purchased and used independently, 
or can be linked in any combination to form a complete, coordinated business system. 


VERSARECEIVABLES™ $99.95 

VERSA RECEIVABLES 1 " is a complete menu driven accounts receivable, invoicing, and 
monthly statement generating system. It keeps track of all information related to who 
owes you or your company money, and can provide automatic billing for past due ac¬ 
counts. VERSA RECEIVABLES"* prints all necessary statements, invoices, and summary 
reports and can be linked with VERSA LEDGER IP and VERSA INVENTORY”’. 

VERSAPAYABLES™ $99.95 

VERSA PAYABLES"* is designed to keep track of current and aged payables, keeping you 
in touch with all information regarding how much money your company owes, and to 
whom. VERSA PAYABLES"* maintains a complete record on each vendor, prints checks, 
check registers, vouchers, transaction reports, aged payables reports, vendor reports, 
and more. With VERSA PAYABLES™, you can even let your computer automatically select 
which vouchers are to be paid. 

VERSAPaYROLL’* $99.95 

VERSA PAYROLL™ is a powerful and sophisticated, but easy to use payroll system that 
keeps track of all government-required payroll information. Complete employee records 
are maintained, and all necessary payroll calculations are performed automatically, with 
totals displayed on screen for operator approval. A payroll can be run totally, automati¬ 
cally, or the operator can intervene to prevent a check from being printed, or to alter 
information on it. If desired, totals may be posted to the VERSA LEDGER IT* system. 


VersaLedger ir $149.95 

VersaLedger IP" is a complete accounting system that grows as your business 
grows. VersaLedger ir" can be used as a simple personal checkbook register, 
expanded to a small business bookkeeping system or developed into a large 
corporate general ledger system without any additional software. 

• VersaLedger IP" gives you almost unlimited storage capacity 

(300 to 10,000 entries per month, depending on the system), 

• stores all check and general ledger information forever, 

• prints tractor-feed checks, 

• handles multiple checkbooks and general ledgers, 

• prints 17 customized accounting reports including check registers, 
balance sheets, income statements, transaction reports, account 
listings, etc. 

VersaLedger 11™ comes with a professionally-written 160 page manual de¬ 
signed for first-time users. The VersaLedger II™ manual will help you become 
quickly familiar with VersaLedger II™, using complete sample data files 
supplied on diskette and more than 50 pages of sample printouts. 


VERSAlNVENTORY™ $99.95 

VERSA IMVENTORY™ is a complete inventory control system that gives you instant access 
to data on any item. VERSA INVENTORY™ keeps track of all information related to what 
items are in stock, out of stock, on backorder, etc., stores sales and pricing data, alerts 
you when an item falls below a preset reorder point, and allows you to enter and print 
invoices directly or to link with the VERSA RECEIVABLES™ system. VERSA INVENTORY™ prints 
all needed inventory listings, reports of items below reorder point, inventory value re¬ 
ports, period and year-to-aate sales reports, price lists, inventory checklists, etc. 


•CQMRJTRQNICS; 

50 N. PASCACK ROAD, SPRING VALLEY, N.Y. 10977 


SATISFACTION GUARANTEED! 


Every VERSABUSINESS™ module is guaranteed to outperform all other competitive systems, 
and at a fraction of their cost. If you are not satisfied with any VERSABUSINESS™ module, you 
may return it within 30 days for a refund Manuals for any VERSABUSINESS™ module may be 
purchased for $25 each, credited toward a later purchase of that module. 


To Order: 


Write or call Toll-free (800) 431-2818 

(N.Y.S. residents call 914-425-1535) 


* add $5 to CANADA or MEXICO 
add proper postage elsewhere 


* add $3 for shipping in UPS areas 

* add $4 for C.O.D. or non-UPS areas 

Inquiry 127 

DEALER INQUIRIES WELCOME 

All prices and specifications subject to change / Delivery subject to availability. 


* TRS-80 is a trademark of the Radio Shack Division of Tandy Ccrp. - ‘APPLE is a trademark of Apple Corp. - ‘IBM is a trademark of IBM Corp. - ‘OSBORNE is a trademark of Osborne Corp. 

*CP/M is a trademark of Digital Research ‘XEROX is a trademark of Xerox Corp. 
















^ •' (Oi 

•w'iO'' r >- • ■ V 


.ft& a&w sag 

A black border may appear around the Palette slide image, 
which will be imperceptible when projected. 





















Now last minute presentations 
can be made from 
your personal computer. 

In color. In house. In minutes. 


Introducing Polaroid Palette. 


Whether your presentation is in 30 
minutes or 30 days, the new Polaroid 
Palette Computer Image Recorder will 
make it easier. Priced at under $1800* it 
lets you make Polaroid instant 35mm 
slides or prints from personal 
computer-generated data. Right at your 
desk. So now you can create a presen¬ 
tation in minutes. Without sending out 
for processing, paying premiums for 
rush service or risking the security of 
your confidential information. 

Works with the graphics 
packages of the IBM PC or XT, 
DEC Rainbow or PRO, Apple He 
or 11+ and AT&T 6300. 

The Polaroid Palette is designed to 
work with many graphics software 
packages. In fact, when using such 
popular programs as Graphwriter, 
Chart-Master, Sign-Master, DR Draw 
and DR Graph, Palette can virtually 
double both the horizontal and vertical 
resolution of your monitor. Plus, a 


“backfill” feature reduces raster lines 
for a smoother, more finished appear¬ 
ance. The result—presentation quality 
slides. On-the-spot. 

Color 35mm slides, even from a 
black and white CRT 

Think of it as an artists palette. Be¬ 
cause Palette “paints” your graphs, 
charts and text. You’re choosing from 
up to 72 colors. If you don’t want red, 
press a few keys—it’s green. And if 
you’re not the artistic-type, Polaroid 
has developed a menu of color sets: 
combinations of colors that have been 
specially coordinated to complement 
your presentations. And all of this is 
yours, even if you have a black and 
white monitor. 

Lets you make last minute 
changes or add 

up-to-the-minute information. 

The Polaroid Palette is the fast, con¬ 
venient, low-cost way to prepare slides 
for your presentation. And perhaps 


even more important, Palette allows 
you to keep confidential information 
confidential. You won’t have to send 
your work out to anyone again. 

So why wait until the last minute to 
find out about Polaroid Palette? Call 
this toll-free number or return this 
coupon. Because with Palette you’ll 
make your deadlines, in no time. 


For a demonstration, call toll-free, or mail the 
coupon to Polaroid Corp., E.I. Marketing, Dept. 
604, 575 Technology Sq., Cambridge, MA 02139. 

CALL 1-800-225-1618 

□ Send information. □ Have representative call. 

Name-Title- 

Company -- 

Address- 

City_State-Zip- 

Telephone 1 - 1 - 

PC make and model- 


s Polaroid 


L 


B-2/85 j 
•Suggested list price. Polaroid* 


Inquiry 254 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 89 

















EVENT QUEUE 



Apple II, lie , III and Apple compatible 


Universal for virtually all standard parallel 
printers. 

Famous for Graphics (LoRes, HiRes, SuperRes) 
(Logo Compatible) 

Terrific for text (even rotates spreadsheets to 
print sidewards) 

One set of commands for all printers. One 
command changes character sizes. Create 
your own printing fonts, alphabets and sym¬ 
bols ... bold face, underline, italics, subscript 
and superscript, HiRes Zooming. 



FREE Utility and Demon¬ 
stration Software Disk. 
CLEAR, comprehensive 
user documentation. 
PKASO/U ... for all the 
reasons you need an 
interface 


systems. Contact David 
Maier, Department of Com¬ 
puter Science. Oregon Grad 
Center, 19600 Northwest 
Walker Rd. Beaverton. OR 
97006. March 25-27 

• OPTICAL STORAGE 
TECHNIQUES-The Third 
Annual Conference on Op¬ 
tical Storage of Documents 
and Images. Shoreham 
Hotel. Washington. DC. Con¬ 
tact Technology Opportunity 
Conference. POB 14817. San 
Francisco. CA 94114-0817. 
(415) 626-1133. March 25-27 

• CAI INVESTIGATED 

The TWenty-Sixth Interna¬ 
tional Conference of the 
Association for the Develop¬ 
ment of Computer-based In¬ 
structional Systems. 
Philadelphia. PA. Presenta¬ 
tions and panel discussions 
will explore the research 
and use of computers for 
direct instruction. Interest 
groups for educators. Con¬ 
tact ADCIS International 
Headquarters. Miller Hall 
409, Western Washington 
University. Bellingham. WA 
9822 5. March 25-28 

• INTEGRATION, COMMU¬ 
NICATIONS, COMPUTERS 

IEEE INFOCOM '85. 
Washington. DC. Papers will 
address such issues as archi¬ 
tecture. protocols, gateways, 
and support. Contact Tbm 
Stack. IEEE INFOCOM '85. 
POB 639, Silver Spring, MD 
20901, (301) 589-8142. 

March 25-28 

• MACHINE VISION EYED 

The Applied Machine Vision 
Conference and Vision 85 
Exposition. Cobo Hall. 
Detroit, MI. Contact Society 
of Manufacturing Engineers. 
One SME Dr.. POB 930. 
Dearborn. MI 48121. (313) 
271-0777. March 25-28 


Contact us tor a list of Authorized Dealers near you. 


5S 


Interactive Structures, Inc. 
146 Montgomery Avenue 
Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004 
Telephone: (215) 667-1713 


• JOINT CONFERENCE IN 
MINNESOTA-Updata '85: 
The Seventh Annual Minne¬ 
sota Joint Computer Con¬ 
ference. Radisson South 


Hotel. Bloomington. MN. A 
conference for data-pro- 
cessing professionals. The 
theme is "Meeting Tbmor- 
row's Challenge Tbday!" 
Contact Mick Williams. Stan¬ 
dard Iron. 4990 North Coun¬ 
ty Rd. 18. New Hope, MN 
55428. (612) 533-1110. 

March 28-29 

• WESTERN EDUCATORS 
MEET—Western Educational 
Computing Workshops. Uni¬ 
versity of California. Santa 
Cruz. A series of workshops 
and demonstrations that 
give educators hands-on ex¬ 
perience with computer ap¬ 
plication packages and com¬ 
puter hardware. Contact Hal 
Roach. Computer Services. 
Mount San Antonio College. 
1100 North Grand Ave.. 
Walnut. CA 94542. 

March 28-29 

• WEST COAST FAIRE 
The Tfenth Annual West 
Coast Computer Faire. 
Moscone Center. San Fran¬ 
cisco. CA. This is one of the 
largest computer shows. 
Contact Computer Faire Inc.. 
Suite 201. 181 Wells Ave.. 
Newton Falls. MA 02159. 
(800) 826-2680; in Massa¬ 
chusetts, (617) 965-8350. 
March 30-A pril 2 

• COMPUTERFEST 

The 1985 Greater Baltimore 
Hamboree and Computer- 
fest. Maryland State Fair¬ 
grounds. Timonium. Exhibits, 
flea market, and forums 
highlight this annual event. 
Admission is $4, and the 
gates open at 8 a.m. Con¬ 
tact Baltimore Amateur 
Radio Club Inc., POB 95. 
Timonium. MD 21093-0095. 
(301) 561-1282. March 31 

• FOCUS ON SOFTWARE 
Softcon, Georgia World Con¬ 
gress Center. Atlanta. The 
Spring and Fall Softcons 
have been merged into this 
event. Nearly 3000 software 
vendors are expected to 
participate. Seminars, panel 
discussions, forums, and 


90 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 153 






EVENT QUEUE 


workshops are planned. 
Registration is $35 for 
exhibits-only admission or 
$195 for a four-day con¬ 
ference and exhibits badge. 
Contact Softcon, Northeast 
Expositions. 822 Boylston 
St.. Chestnut Hill. MA 02167, 
(617) 739-2000. 

March 3 \-April 3 

• TELECONFERENCING 
SEMINAR—Teleconferencing 
in the Marketplace. Interna¬ 
tional Congress Centre RAI, 
Amsterdam. The Nether¬ 
lands. A seminar for users 
and suppliers of telecon¬ 
ferencing services and 
facilities. For further informa¬ 
tion. contact International 
Congress and Convention 
Association. POB 5343, 

1007 AH Amsterdam, The 
Netherlands. 

March 31-April 3 

• MICROPROCESSOR IDEA 
EXCHANGE-The 1985 
Microprocessor Forum. 

Bally's Park Place Casino 
Hotel. Atlantic City. NJ. 
Tutorials, forums, and ex¬ 
hibits will be held. A robotic 
maze contest will be held. 

On April 1 and 2, the 1985 
IEEE VLSI Tfest Workshop 
will be held. Contact IEEE 
Computer Society, Suite 300, 
1109 Spring St.. Silver 
Spring. MD 20910. (301) 
589-8142. March 31-A pril 4 

April 1985 

• GULF COAST SHOW 
The Second Annual Gulf 
Computer & Office Show. 
Rivergate Convention 
Center, New Orleans. LA. 
Seminars, workshops, and 
product displays. Contact 
Gulf Computer & Office 
Show Management, c/o 119 
Avant Garde. Kenner. LA 
70065. (504) 467-9949. 

April 2-4 

• MEET SOME NETWORKS 
Introduction to Network 
Architectures. Atlanta. GA. 
This course provides an 


understanding of the role of 
network architectures and 
explains their many forms. 
The fee is $795. Contact 
Elaine Hadden Nicholas. 
Department of Continuing 
Education, Georgia Institute 
of Technology, Atlanta, GA 
30332-0385, (404) 894-2547. 
April 2-4 

• ENGINEERING WITH 
MODULA-2—Software Engi¬ 
neering with Modula-2. 
Atlanta, GA. See February 
20-22 for details. April 3-5 

• COMMUNICATIONS 
TECHNOLOGY FOR THE 
NONVERBAL-The Fourth 
Annual Conference on Com¬ 
munication Technology: 
Technology and Nonspeak¬ 
ing Children, Joseph Stokes 
Auditorium. Children's 
Hospital of Philadelphia. PA. 
Up-to-the-minute information 
on the use of technology 
with nonverbal children will 
be presented. Concurrent 
sessions will address on¬ 
going research, computers, 
and treatment strategies. 

The registration fee is $95. 
Contact Joan Bruno, 
Children’s Seashore House, 
4100 Atlantic Ave., POB 
4111, Atlantic City. NJ 
08404. (609) 345-5191. ext. 
278. April 12-13 

• GRAPHICS 

Computer Graphics '85. 
Dallas. TX. Tutorials and 
technical sessions on archi¬ 
tectural and engineering 
computer graphics, artificial 
intelligence, business graph¬ 
ics, and CAD/CAM. Contact 
National Computer Graphics 
Association. Suite 601, 8401 
Arlington Blvd., Fairfax. VA 
22031. (703) 698-9600. 

April 14-18 

• OPTICAL STORAGE 
INVESTIGATED-The 1985 
Materials Research Society: 
Symposium D. Golden Gate¬ 
way Holiday Inn, San Fran¬ 
cisco. CA. A mass-storage 
technologies symposium in- 

(continued) 


High performance to cost ratio... 


Programming Chips? 

Projects develop profitably with development hardware /software from GTEK. 



MODEL 7956 . 

(with RS232 option)_$1099. 

MODEL 7956 (stand alone) $ 979. 

GTEK’s outstanding Gang Pro¬ 
grammer with intelligent 
algorithm can copy 8 EPROMS at 
a time! This unit is used in a pro¬ 
duction environment when pro¬ 
gramming a large number of chips 
is required. It will program all 
popular chips on the market 
through the 27512 EPROMS. It 
also supports the Intel 2764A & 
27128A chips. It will also program 
single chip processors. 



MODEL 7228 - $599 


This model has all the features 
of Model 7128, plus Intelligent 
Programming Algorithims. It 
supports the newest devices 
available through 512Kbits; pro¬ 
grams 6x as fast as standard 
algorithims. Programs the 2764 in 
one minute! Supports Intel 2764A 
& 27128A chips. Supports 

Tektronics, Intel, Motorola and 
other formats. 


EPROM & PAL 


PROGRAMMERS 

—These features are standard from GTEK— 

Compatible with all RS232 serial inta-face ports • Auto select baud rate • With or without hand¬ 
shaking • Bidirectional XotVXcff • CTS/DTR supported • Read pin compatible ROMS • No per 
sonaiity modules • Intel, Motorola, MCS86 Hex formats • Split facility for 16 bit data paths • 
Read, program, formatted list commands • Interrupt driven — program and verily real time while 
sending data* Program single byte, block, or whole EPROM • Intelligent diagnostics discern bad 
and/or erasable EPROM • Verify erasure and compare commands • Busy light • Complete with 
Textool zero insertion force socket and integral 120 VAC power (240 VAC/50Hz available) • 



MODEL 7324 $1199 
This unit has a built-in compiler. 
The Model 7324 programs all 
MM I. National and TI 20 and 24 
pin PALs. Has non-volatile 
memory. It operates stand alone 
or via RS232. 



MODEL 7128 - $429 
This model has the highest 
performance-to-price-ratio of any 
unit. This is GTEK's most popular 
unit! It supports the newest 
devices available through 
256Kbits. 


MODEL 7316 Pal Programmer.$ 599 

Programs Series 20 PALs. Built-in PALASM compiler. 

DEVICES SUPPORTED 

by GTEK’s EPROM Programmers 

NMOS NMOS CMOS EEPROM MPU’S 

2758 2764A 2508 68764 27C16 5213 I2816A 8748 8741H 

2716 27128 2516 8755 27C16H 5213H I2817A 8748H 8744 

2732 27128A 2532 5133 27C32H 52B13 8749H 8751 

2732A 27256 2564 5143 27C64 X2816 8741 68705 

2764 27512 68766 27C256 48016 8742H 


UTILITY PACKAGES 

GTEK’s PGX Utility Packages will allow you to specify a range of addresses to 
send to the programmer, verify erasure and/or set the EPROM type. The PGX Utili¬ 
ty Package includes GHEX, a utility used to generate an Intel HEX file. 

PALX Utility Package — for use with GTEK’s Pal Programmers — allows 
transfer of PALASM® source file or ASCII HEX object code file. 

Both utility packages are available for CPM,® MSDOS,® PCDOS,® ISIS® and 
TRSDOS® operating systems. Call for pricing. 


AVOCET CROSS ASSEMBLERS 

These assemblers are available to handle the 8748, 8751, Z8, 6502, 68X and other 
microprocessors. They are available for CPM and MSDOS computers. When order¬ 
ing, please specify processor and computer types. 

ACCESSORIES 


Model 7128-L1, L2, L2A 

(OEM Quantity) $259. 
Model 7128-24 $329. 

Cross Assemblers $200. 

PGX Utilities Call for pricing 

PALX Call for pricing 


XASM (for MSDOS).$250. 

U/V Eraser DE-4 . $ 80. 

RS232 Cables .$ 30. 

8751 Adapter . $174. 

8755 Adapter . $135. 

48 Family Adapter.$ 98. 

68705 Programmer . $299. 


GfEK 


Development Hardware/Software 
P.O. Box 289, Waveland, MS 39576 
601/467-8048 
, INC. 


GTEK, PALASM, CPM, MSDOS, PCDOS, ISIS, and TRSDOS 
are all registered trademarks. 


Inquiry 126 


FEBRUARY 1985 - BYTE 91 





























Inquiry 228 


When You Want The Best, Call... 

libs inc. 

National Business Software and Supplies 




Macintosh 

MULTIMATE 

$285 

FLIGHT SIMULATOR 

$ 35 

PFS FILE 

89 

MULTIPLAN 

125 

PFS REPORT 

79 

DESK ORGANIZER 

CALL 

PFS WRITE 

89 

BANKSTREET WRITER 

CALL 

SYMPHONY 

CALL 

MacFORTH 

98 

LOTUS 1*2*3 

CALL 

PRO KEY 

59 

TURBO GIFT PACK 

72 

PRO KEY 3.0 

82 

WORDSTAR 

229 

NORTON UTILITIES 

55 

SIDEKICK 

35 

R BASE 4000 

268 


TEAC #55-B DRIVES FOR IBM PC 
& COMPATIBLES DS/DD $139 


Ribbons and Printwheels 
EPSON-OKIDATA-NEC-DIABLO, ETC. 
call for prices 

( 602 ) 967-5681 

500 W. Broadway, Ste, 116 
Tempe, AZ 85282 

No cash refunds —all sales final. 20% restocking fee. Add $5 for credit card 
purchases. AZ residents add 6%. Prices subject to change, product subject to 
availability. Allow two weeks for personal/company checks to clear. All items are 
new with manufacturer s warranty. Software not warranted for suitability of pur¬ 
pose. Shipping and handling add 55 per order. Minimum order $50. 


visa Mon-Fri 
8AM-5PM 

MasterCard 






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EVENT QUEUE 


vestigating optical data 
storage. Contact D. H. 

Davies, Symposium Co-Chair, 
3M, 420 North Bernardo 
Ave., Mountain View, CA 
94043. April 15-18 

• INDUSTRIAL SOFTWARE 
EXPO—The Second 
C1MCOM: Industrial Soft¬ 
ware Conference & Exposi¬ 
tion, Disneyland Hotel, 
Anaheim, CA. Contact Com¬ 
puter and Automated Sys¬ 
tems Association of the 
Society of Manufacturing 
Engineers, One SME Dr., 
POB 930, Dearborn, MI 
48121, (313) 271-1500. 

April 16-18 

• TRAINING AND 
TECHNOLOGY-The Third 
Annual Technology in Train¬ 
ing and Education (T1TE) 
Conference, Antler's Hotel, 
Colorado Springs, CO. A 
conference designed to 
facilitate the interchange of 
ideas and to explore ways 
that computers and tech¬ 
nology can be applied to 
education and training. 
Contact Lt. Colonel McCann, 
1985 TITE Conference, 
USAFA/DFSR, USAF 
Academy, Colorado Springs, 
CO 80840-5751, (303) 
472-4195. April 16-19 

• NETWORK CONTROL 
AND MANAGEMENT-Net- 

work Management/Technical 
Control, Marriott Copley 
Place, Boston, MA. Diag¬ 
nostic and test instruments 
will be among the products 
displayed. Contact Louise 
Myerow, CW/Conference 
Management Group, 375 
Cochituate Rd., POB 880, 
Framingham, MA 01701, 
(800) 22 5-4698; in Massa¬ 
chusetts, (617) 879-0700. 
April 18-19 

• PATIENT CARE AND 
COMPUTERS-The Second 
Annual Physicians and Com¬ 
puters: Applications in Pa¬ 
tient Care, Las Vegas Hilton, 
NV. This conference ad¬ 
dresses the concerns of 


doctors, nurses, dietitians, 
pharmacists, administrators, 
and medical record adminis¬ 
trators. Contact Beverly J. 
johnson. University of 
Southern California School 
of Medicine, Postgraduate 
Division, 202 5 Zonal Ave. 
KAM 318, Los Angeles, CA 
90033, (213) 224-7051. 

April 19-21 

• COMPUTER FESTIVAL 
The Tenth Annual Trenton 
Computer Festival. Trenton 
State College. Trenton, NJ. 
Highlights talks, tutorials, 
user-group activities, ex¬ 
hibits. computer-graphics 
theater, games, and a 
50-acre outdoor electronics 
flea market. Contact Ms. 
Marilyn Hughes. Trenton 
State College. Hillwood 
Lakes CN 550, Trenton, NJ 
08625, (609) 771-2487. 

April 20-2 1 

• AIDS FOR EDUCATORS 

AEDS/ECOO 85; The 
Twenty-Third Annual Con¬ 
vention of the Association 
for Educational Data Sys¬ 
tems (AEDS). Hilton Har¬ 
bour Castle, Toronto, 

Ontario. The theme is 
"Computing Knows No 
Borders." Contact AEDS/ 
ECOO '85, c/o OISE, 2 52 
Bloor St. W, Toronto, 

Ontario M5S 1V6, Canada. 

In the U.S.. AEDS/ECOO 
'85. 1201 16th St. NW, 
Washington, DC 20036. 

April 21-27 

• SPEECH IN FOCUS 

Speech Tech '85, Vista In¬ 
ternational Hotel. World 
Trade Center, New York 
City. Speakers and ex¬ 
hibitors will focus on voice 
synthesis and recognition. 
Registration is $195. Contact 
Media Dimensions Inc., POB 
1121 Gracie Station, New 
York. NY 10028, (212) 
772-7068 or 680-6451. 

April 22-24 

• PUBLIC NETWORK 
OPERATIONS—X.2 5 and 

( continued ) 


92 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 200 
























POWER* CP/M SOFTWARE 

■ ^ Di T e $OQ95^ '' 

inual fcW 


NEVADA 


FORTRAN. 

DISKETTE & MANUAL 

l $29.95 


Nevada FORTRAN is based upon 
the ANSI-66 standards 
(FORTRAN IV) with some 
1977 level features. Advanced features include: IF ... THEN ... ELSE 
statement; COPY (Include); CHAINing with COMMON; and TRACE 
debugging. Package includes a diskette, 214-page manual and 5 
sample programs. Included also is an 8080 assembler. Requires 48K 
RAM. 


NEVADA 

BASIC. 

DISKETTE & MANUAL 


1 $29.95 


With the built-in, full-screen 
text editor, you can easily 
develop programs for 1/10 the cost 
of a comparable BASIC interpreter. What’s more, Nevada BASIC has 
full Matrix operations, Single- and Multi-Line functions, and BCD 
math (no round-off errors). You get a diskette and a 220-page manual. 
Requires 48K RAM. 


NEVADA 

PILOT. 

DISKETTE & MANUAL 


l $29.95 


Nevada PILOT, written by Prof. 

John Starkweather, the language’s 
creator, meets and exceeds all 
PILOT-73 standards. See the review in January 1983 MICROCOMPU¬ 
TING. This package includes a diskette, 131-page manual, and 10 
useful sample programs. 

WHY WAIT? ORDER YOURS TODAY! 

Satisfaction guaranteed—or your money back. If for any reason 
you’re not completely satisfied, just return the package—in good 
condition—with the sealed diskette unopened, within 15 days and 
we'll refund your money. 

Checks must be in U.S. Dollars 
and drawn on a U.S. Bank. 

California deliveries add 6% or 
6.5% sales tax. 

SHIPPING AND HANDLING FEES: Add $4.00 for the first package or 
manual and $2.00 each additional. OVERSEAS: Add $15.00 for the 
first package or manual and $5.00 each additional. COD’s: Add 
$4.00. 


o 


WE WELCOME C.O.D.’s 




Since 1977 


ELLIS COMPUTING 


(415)753-0186 

ELLIS COMPUTING, INC. 
3917 Noriega Street 
San Francisco, CA 94122 


NEVADA 

COBOL 

DISKETTE & MANUAL 


l $29.95 


Nevada COBOL, based upon the 
ANSI-74 standards, has all the 
popular features. Powerful level 2 
features include: compound conditionals and full CALL CANCEL. 
This software package includes a diskette, 165-page manual, plenty 
of examples and 16 complete COBOL source code programs. 


NEVADA 

PASCAL 

DISKETTE & MANUAL 


l 


Advanced features include: 

14-Digit precision; BCD math (no 
round-off errors); Floating point 
-i- 63 -64; TRACE debugging; Arrays up to 8 dimensions; 64K strings; 
External procedures; and Dynamic Module loading. You get a 
diskette and a 184-page manual. Requires 60K RAM and one disk 
drive with at least 90K storage. 


r 


NEVADA 

EDIT. 

DISKETTE & MANUAL 


1 $29.95 


Nevada EDIT, a full-screen, 
video-display text editor, is 
designed specifically for computer 
program text preparation. Nevada EDIT is completely user-change¬ 
able, can be configured to almost any terminal and takes up only 
12K of disk space. This package includes a diskette and 59-page 
manual. 

ALSO AVAILABLE: 

★ EXTRA MANUALS.$14.95 

★ COBOL Application Packages, Book 1.$ 9.95 

★ BIG PRINT-Diskette.$19.95 

The CP/M Operating System, an 8080, 8085, or Z-80 (8-Bit) micropro¬ 
cessor, and 32K RAM are required, unless otherwise stated above. 

WHEN YOU ORDER, PLEASE SPECIFY ONE OF THE 
FOLLOWING DISKETTE FORMATS: 


□ 

8” SSSD (Standard CP/M IBM 3740) 

□ 

Kaypro Double Density (NCR) 

5Vi” Diskettes for: 

□ 

Micropolis Mod II 

□ 

Access/Actrix 

□ 

NEC PC 8001 

□ 

Apple CP/M 

□ 

North Star Double Density 

□ 

DEC VT 180 

□ 

North Star Single Density 

□ 

DEC Rainbow 

□ 

Osborne Single Density 

□ 

Epson QX-10 

□ 

Sanyo 1000,1050 

□ 

Heath Hard Sector (Z-89) 

□ 

Superbrain DD DOS 3.X 

□ 

Heath Soft Sector 


(512 byte sec) 


(Z-90, Z-100) 

□ 

Televideo 

□ 

IBM-PC (Requires Z-80, 

□ 

TRS-80 Model 1 (Base O Mapper) 


Baby Blue II Card) 

□ 

Xerox 820 Single Density 


CP/M is a registered trademark of Digital Research, Inc Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft 
Corp. TRS-80 is a registered trademark of Tandy Corp Apple II is a trademark of Apple Computer, Inc 
Osborne is a registered trademark of Osborne Computer Corp. Xerox 820 is a trademark of Xerox Corp 
Kaypro is a trademark of Non-linear Sys Heath/Zemth is a trademark of Heath Corp. IBM is a registered 
trademark of International Business Machines, Corp Nevada BASIC, Nevada COBOL. Nevada FOR¬ 
TRAN. Nevada PILOT. Nevada EDIT, Nevada PASCAL, and Ellis Computing are trademarks of Ellis Com¬ 
puting, Inc © 1984 Ellis Computing. Inc 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 93 












































Inquiry 85 for Dealers. Inquiry 86 for End-Users. 


BEFORE YOU BUY 
CABLE ASSEMBLIES, 



Heavy guage 
underhood 
shield 


22 AWG 

twisted 

conductors 


22 AWG 
twisted conductors 


CHECK UNDER THE HOOD! 


DATA SPEC™ cable assemblies are the very best. Each 
cable is fully shielded to exceed FCC EMI/RFI emission 
requirements. The unique P.D.T. technique, introduced by 
DATA SPEC™ and employed beneath the hood shield, 
insures maximum integrity under the most adverse 
conditions DATA SPEC™ has interface cables for all your 
requirements: Printers, Modems, Monitors, Disk Drives, 
and much more. And all DATA SPEC™ cable assemblies 
carry a lifetime warranty. Insist on DATA SPEC™ cables in 
the bright orange package. Available at better computer 
dealers everywhere. For more information, call or write: 


□®7ra<3CP[3CL 

A Division of Alliance Research Corporation 

20120 Plummer Street • Chatsworth. CA 91311 • (818) 993-1202 

Copyright © 1964 by Alliance Ftesearch Corporation Patent F*ND 


dBASE II 

with 65,000 memory variables, 
arrays, 8087 support, high-speed 
math functions, windows, 
animation, full syntax checking! 

Impossible? 

Not anymore! 

. .. with GRYPHON 
Microproducts’ dBASE II 
“add-ins". For PC/MS-DOS. 
Write or call for details. 



Q'lWWO^ 
mi croproduct s 


P.O. BOX 6543 SILVER SPRING. MD. 20906 
[301)946-2505 


EVENT QUEUE 


Packet Switching Networks. 
Atlanta. GA. This course 
covers the internal opera¬ 
tions of a packet-switching 
network and its implementa¬ 
tion. The fee is $795. Con¬ 
tact Elaine Hadden 
Nicholas, Department of 
Continuing Education. 
Georgia Institute of Tech¬ 
nology. Atlanta. GA 30332- 
0385. (404) 894-2547. 

April 23-25 

• TRADE SHOW. 
CONFERENCE— Electro/8 5 
and Mini/Micro North- 
east-85, New York City. 
Topics: artificial intelligence, 
communications and net¬ 
works. consumer electronics, 
high-density data storage, 
and personal computing. 
Contact Electronic Conven¬ 
tions Management. 8110 
Airport Blvd.. Los Angeles. 
CA 90045. (213) 772-2965. 
April 23-25 

• COMPUTER APPLI¬ 
CATIONS EXPLORED 

Perscomp '85. Sofia. 

Bulgaria. An international 
conference on the applica¬ 
tions of personal computers 
and the problems en¬ 
countered in using them. 
Contact Dr. Marcel Israel. 
Bulgarian Academy of 
Sciences, Institute of In¬ 
dustrial Cybernetics and 
Robotics. 1113 Sofia, Acad. 
G. Bonchev St.. Bl. 12. 
Bulgaria; tel: 72-46-98; 

Telex: 22836 ITKR BG. 

April 23-26 

• MICROS IN EMPIRE 
STATE— The Fourth Annual 
New York Computer Show 
and Software Exposition. 
Nassau County Coliseum. 
Uniondale, NY. Contact Ann 
Katcef, CompuShows, POB 
3315. Annapolis. MD 21403. 
(800) 368-2066; in Annap¬ 
olis. (301) 263-8044; in 
Baltimore. (301) 269-7694; 

in the District of Columbia. 
(202) 261-1047. April 25-28 

• VIRGINIA COMPUTING 

The Fourth Annual Virginia 


Computer Show and Soft¬ 
ware Exposition. Pavilion. 
Virginia Beach, VA. Contact 
Ann Katcef, CompuShows, 
POB 3315. Annapolis, MD 
21403, (800) 368-2066; in 
Annapolis, (301) 263-8044, 
in Baltimore. (301) 269- 
7694; in the District of 
Columbia. (202) 261-1047. 
April 25-28 

• EQUIPMENT SALE 

Produx 2000: Wholesale 
Expo 85. Civic Center, 
Philadelphia. PA. Contact 
Vertical Marketing Corp.. 

POB 557. Bala Cynwyd, PA 
19004. (800) 523-3882; in 
Pennsylvania. (215) 

4 57-2303. April 26-28 

• C FOR ENGINEERS 

C Programming for Engi¬ 
neers, University of 
Michigan. Dearborn. A short 
course and workshop. Con¬ 
tact Professor R. E. Little. 
University of Michigan. 4901 
Evergreen Rd.. Dearborn. MI 
48128. (313) 593-5241. 

April 29-M ay 3 

• COMMERCIAL Al, 
HIGH-TECH CONFERENCE 

Al '85: Artificial Intelligence 
and Advanced Computer 
Technology Conference/Ex¬ 
hibition. Convention Center, 
Long Beach. CA. Technical 
sessions, panel discussions, 
and product displays are 
planned. Contact Tower Con¬ 
ference Management Co.. 

331 West Wesley St.. 
Wheaton. IL 60187. (312) 
668-8100. April 30-M ay 2 

• MEETING ON LINE 

National Online Meeting. 
Sheraton Centre Hotel. New 
York City. Formal paper pre¬ 
sentations. product review 
sessions, exhibits, and 
special workshops and 
seminars transmitted via 
satellite. Contact Thomas 
Hogan. National Online 
Meeting. Learned Informa¬ 
tion Inc., 143 Old Marlton 
Pike, Medford. NJ 08055. 
(609) 654-6266. 

April 30-M ay 2 ■ 


94 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 













INSTANT LAN 


WITH STANDARD MICROSYSTEMS’ NEW ARCNET-PC, ARCNET-S100 OR 
ARCNET-LINK, YOU CAN CREATE YOUR OWN LOCAL AREA NETWORK. 



The world's first single-chip local area network controller established 
Standard Microsystems as a leader in networking technology. Now we're 
devoting our technical expertise to bring you revolutionary LAN board prod¬ 
ucts, too. 

Our ARCNET-PC board interconnects up to 255 IBM‘-type personal com¬ 
puters, permitting them to share 
disk files and printer resources 


ARCNET-LINK 


ARCNET-S100 


at an extremely efficient 
2.5 Megabit data rate. 

The ARCNET-S100 board links up to 255 S100 computer systems, providing 
the S100 computer user with a high performance local area network. 

The ARCNET-LINK is a self-contained unit that provides a simplified inter¬ 
face between equipment with a programmable asynchronous RS-232 port 
and an ARCNEr local area network. 

All three products incorporate SMC's industry-standard MOSA/LSI local area 
network chip set to give you a totally integrated and cost-effective LAN solution. 
Software available from Standard Microsystems and others provides increased 
capability for your networking applications. Standard Microsystems Corpora¬ 
tion, 35 Marcus Boulevard, Hauppauge, NY 11788. (516) 273-3100. 


IBM® Is a trademark of the International Business Machines Corporation. 
ARCNET® is a trademark of the Datapoint Corporation. 


STANDARD MICROSYSTEMS 
CORPORATION, 



Inquiry 297 


FEBRUARY 1985 •BYTE 95 

























BYTE 


Features 


The HP Integral Personal Computer 


by Phillip Robinson .98 

Ciarcias Circuit Cellar: 

Build a Serial EPROM Programmer 

by Steve Ciarcia .104 

The Macintosh Office 

by I ohn Markoff and Phillip Robinson .... 120 

C to Pascal 

by Ted Carnevale .138 

Simulate a Servo System 

by Don Stauffer .147 

Introduction to Image Processing 

by Jeffrey L. Star .163 


THIS MONTH BYTE presents a variety of features including two product 
previews. 

Developed under the name "Pisces,'' Hewlett-Packard's Integral Personal 
Computer includes UNIX System III in a transportable package. This product 
preview by Phillip Robinson, technical editor on our West Coast staff, takes 
an introductory look at the Integral, its major subassemblies, and its capabilities 
and limitations. The Integral uses a built-in electroluminescent flat screen and 
ink-jet printer, but the big news is its incorporation of UNIX in ROM. 

The Macintosh continues to provoke lots of love/hate feelings. To bolster 
its attractiveness to business environments. Apple introduced Appldfalk. a 
local-area network, and the first two in a series of peripherals designed to 
be networked. Appldfalk, previewed this month by John Markoff and Phillip 
Robinson, is a departure from what we often consider fundamental to a local- 
area network concept. With only a printer and file server currently available. 
Appl^folk is an interesting approach. 

It you are ready to commit your code to EPROM but don't have access to 
an EPROM programmer, or if you would like to learn more about the pro¬ 
cess. read Ciarcia s Circuit Cellar. This month, Steve shows us how to build 
an EPROM programmer inexpensively. This unit attaches to your computer's 
serial port and uses your computer's intelligence. It is also fully documented 
and is easily expandable to work with future EPROM designs. 

Translating programs among various languages (or even between two 
languages) is a wonderful concept but generally difficult to implement. In "C 
to Pascal," Tkd Carnevale describes some of the conventional approaches and 
problems he discovered while trying to move a graphics subroutine library 
in C to a Pascal environment. He also provides us with a program that makes 
the process less tedious. 

The theme of the March 1984 BYTE was simulation, an intriguing topic once 
relegated only to rooms full of computers. While microcomputers really can't 
compete with the fast, large-scale simulations that run on the CRAY-1 and other 
supercomputers. Don Stauffer uses a microcomputer to "Simulate a Servo 
System." using an electronic weighing scale as an example of servo-system 
simulation. 

leffrey L. Star also capitalizes on the power of the microcomputer in his 
article ‘ Introduction to Image Processing." While commercial broadcast televi¬ 
sion limits gray-scale reproduction to about 12 levels and human vision covers 
a restricted spectrum, image-processing systems usually can deal with at least 
32 gray levels and over 16 million unique colors. And. interestingly, there are 
a couple of image-processing programs available for microcomputers. 


—Gene Smarte, Managing Editor 


FEBRUARY 1985 • B Y T E 97 












PRODUCT 

PREVIEW 


THE HP INTEGRAL 
PERSONAL COMPUTER 

BY PHILLIP ROBINSON 


T he Hewlett-Packard In¬ 
tegral Personal Computer 
is a complete, transport¬ 
able computer system 
designed around UNIX (System III). 

(See photo 1.) With the UNIX kernel 
in ROM (read-only memory), an elec¬ 
troluminescent (EL) flat screen, 
a 3 !/ 2 -inch floppy-disk drive, a built-in ink-jet printer, and 
Hewlett-Packard's Personal Applications Manager (PAM), 
the Integral is a marvel of advanced personal computing 
technology 

History 

A big team worked on the Integral, which, during devel¬ 
opment, was known by the name "Pisces." Some of the 
team’s members I met were Ion Brewster (user interface), 
Ray Fajardo (software), Tim Williams (section manager), 
Doug Collins (hardware manager), and Andy Rood (oper¬ 
ating system). 

While the hardware development of the Integral began 
in the fall of 1982, the software development had begun 
a year earlier. In fact, several projects were merged to 
come up with the Integral. The original design called for 
desktop functions in a transportable box: 80 characters 
by 2 5 lines on the display, a full-size printer (not ther¬ 
mal), and a real keyboard. When the project began, many 
of the elements that would meet those requirements 
didn't exist. To assure that those devices would be ready 
in time, Hewlett-Packard (HP) had to get intimately in¬ 
volved in the particular technologies. For example, HP 
decided early on to use an EL screen and an ink-jet 
printer. At the time, EL technology was in its infancy and 
HP had to become a major factor in the EL marketplace. 

Brass Tacks 

The Integral's logic board is a generic 
68000 8-MHz system supplemented 
by a few special fillips: a memory 
mapper for UNIX and a proprietary 
graphics chip. The 68451 MMU (mem¬ 
ory-management unit) chip wasn't 


used for memory mapping because 
it slows the memory cycle quite a 
bit—it would reside between the pro¬ 
cessor and RAM (random-access 
read/write memory). Instead, only the 
top address bits are mapped, and 
while that mapping is going on. the 
lower-half addressing of the RAM also 
is proceeding. This leaves the RAM's speed unaffected 
while still giving reasonable page sizes. 

The RAM comes as a standard 512K bytes (with 32K 
more for the display) made up of 2 56K by I bit DRAMs 
(dynamic RAMs) with no parity chips. You can purchase 
2 56K and 512K RAM boards separately and insert them 
into the Integral's two internal slots. By using extender 
boxes (which plug into one of the slots, sit underneath 
the Integral, and provide five slots) you can have up to 
5.5 megabytes of RAM. When the 1-megabyte RAM cards 
become available (soon after introduction) you'll be able 
to use the full logical RAM space of 7.5 megabytes. The 
Integral also has 2 56K bytes of ROM. which holds the 
operating system. I'll discuss the Integral's ROM a little 
more in the UNIX section that follows. 

The custom graphics processing unit (GPU) chip was 
designed and made by HP in Corvallis. Oregon. Accord¬ 
ing to Ion Brewster, a lot of effort went into the chip, 
which handles window scrolling, window moves, line 
drawing, and soft character fonts. The GPU is a big chip: 
it has a 16-bit ALU (arithmetic logic unit), a 16-bit data 
path, and a barrel shifter. 

The engineering and a nearly silent fan enable the 
Integral to work in some severe environments—up to 
40 degrees centigrade and 80 percent humidity. (The 
humidity limit is 95 percent without the disks, which 
are the most susceptible to moisture 
problems.) According to HP, some of 
the humidity testing involved just tak¬ 
ing the machine outside—remember, 

( continued ) 

Phillip Robinson is a senior technical editor 
at BYTE. He may be contact at 1000 Elwell 
Court, Palo Alto, CA 94303. 


A new all-in-one 
system makes 
UNIX 

truly portable 


Editor's note: The following is a BYTE 
product preview. It is not a review. We 
provide an advance look at this new 
product because we feel it is signifi¬ 
cant. A complete review will follow in 
a subsequent issue 


98 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


PHOTOGRAPHED BY PAUL AVIS 







■M M 


i r~~i 


' 






Photo 1 




fivrr 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 99 







































Photo 2: 

HP's Personal Applications Manager (PAM) and Calculator. 



this was all done in moist Oregon. 

No Featherweight 

HP says that the Integral is the only 
complete product around (i.e., with 
both a full screen and a printer) that 
you can really carry and that will fit 
under airline seats or in overhead 
racks. Regardless, this machine definitely remains in the 
transportable category. It is smaller than other transport¬ 
ables—such as the Kaypro—but still weighs 27 pounds. 

Reliability 

I asked what sort of reliability the Integral will have when 
it is actually carted around. "You'd be amazed.'' replied 
an HP spokesperson, who recited numerous tests with 
glee. For instance, in one test they dropped the system 
from a meter up: it sustained some cosmetic damage 
but still ran (although that isn't guaranteed). When some¬ 
thing did break during testing, HP made the necessary 
changes to the components or case. Further testing in¬ 
cluded vibrating the system, checking for condensation, 
and giving prototypes to marketing people. 

Another ramification of this reliability obsession is that 
HP won't soon introduce a hard-disk version of the In¬ 
tegral. Though HP engineers admittedly had considered 
the possibility, it seems they don't trust the ruggedness 
of the hard disks they've seen. Beyond that, the design 
team believes that RAM disks and ROM-based operat¬ 
ing systems give hard-disk performance without the 
problems. 

Service 

Service for the Integral will be available through dealers 
or HP. with the standard 90-day warranty offered in the 
U.S. Because of different legal requirements, the warranty 
period will be one year in Europe. You will also be able 
to purchase extended service agreements. 

I/O Capabilities 

The Integral has only a single port on 
the back, an HPIB (Hewlett-Packard In¬ 


terface Bus) socket. If you need more 
I/O (input/output) capabilities you 
have to put I/O boards in the slots (for 
example, an RS-232C card, which 
should be immediately available). 

Another form of I/O is provided by 
the keyboard and mouse sockets. 
These sockets are called Human Inter¬ 
face Loop (HIL) ports and can handle other devices, such 
as graphics tablets. Hewlett-Packard has standardized the 
protocol for these ports throughout many of its wide 
range of products. 

Display 

The Integral’s electroluminescent, flat-screen display is 
a centerpiece. Although the display isn't manufactured 
at HP. the HP engineers worked closely with the vendor 
to assure readability and reliability. In fact, each time I 
talked to an HP engineer I was assured that the "slight 
shadowing'' on the prototype screen had been corrected. 
Unfortunately, I never saw the shadow. Maybe eyes 
trained on LCDs (liquid-crystal displays) aren't yet ready 
to analyze an EL flat-screen critically. The screen is also 
fast—with no phosphors to fade, it could be faster than 
a CRT (cathode-ray tube). The only color choice is amber. 

With 512 by 2 55 pixels in an area 8 inches wide and 
4 inches tall, the Integral screen is twice the size of the 
Grid Compass screen—the only other well-known exam¬ 
ple of an EL on a microcomputer. Because the screen 
is so thin, the Integral could probably be the shallowest 
system you have ever put on a desk. While transportables 
of the Osborne and Kaypro variety have to be unbut¬ 
toned and then tilted over, taking up much of the depth 
of a desk, the Integral retains its standing position, with 
only the keyboard folding down to occupy writing space. 

An EL display is clearer than a CRT because there's 
no focus problem. As project manager Tim Williams 
noted dryly, "If a dot lights up. a dot lights up.'' 

The Integral has a variety of fonts and a font editor 
that lets you create your own. An antireflective coating 
and a circular polarizer for glare 
reduction combine to improve your 


I n one test, 

HP dropped the 
Integral from a meter 
up. It still ran. 



100 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 




























Photo 3: 

PAM. with HP's MemoMaker. 



view of the already crisp images. 

Keyboard 

The Integral's low-profile keyboard 
(photo 4) is a compact adaptation of 
a new HP standard keyboard that will 
be used with portables, desktops, and 
terminals. The keyboard has com¬ 
pletely soft mapping because it will be used in a number 
of countries: the Corvallis division of HP gets half of its 
business from outside the United States, so German, 
French, Spanish, and British versions of the Integral also 
were set for introduction in January. Another effect of 
European sales is that the arrangement of the keyboard 
(and of other system elements such as the display and 
fonts) had to meet European ergonomic standards. 

The keyboard consists of a full-size QWERTY layout 
with sculpted keys surrounded by special function keys. 
My first impression is that the keyboard is not especial¬ 
ly quiet but is fast and easy to type with. The numeric 
keypad on the right side is closer to the alphabetic keys 
than on many other HP keyboards: the engineers had 
to squeeze it inward because of the requirements of por¬ 
tability. The cursor keys are below the numeric keypad. 

Several of the numeric keys also have special functions, 
which are printed on the keys, such as Insert Line and 
Delete Character. The Integral also has: a Select key, used 
to shift the active window on the screen: Extend keys, 
which, in conjunction with the alphabetic keys, produce 
special characters; a Reset/Break key and a Stop key. 
placed in the extreme top left to prevent frustrating ac¬ 
cidents: and eight programmable function keys, part of 
the standard HP user interface. The bottom lines of the 
Integral's screen display the changing definitions of the 
function keys. 

Mass Storage 

The mass-storage capacity of the Integral consists of one 
HP-standard, 314-inch floppy-disk drive with hard-shell 
disks that hold 71 OK bytes each. One of my first reac¬ 
tions to the machine was, “Why is 
there only one floppy-disk drive?'' 


“One disk is cheaper than two,'' says 
HP's Andy Rood. “So the question is: 
'Why two?"' 

Normally manufacturers include two 
disk drives to provide enough total 
storage, separate storage devices 
for programs and data, and backup 
capability. 

According to HP. the Integral's single floppy-disk drive. 
RAM. and ROM meet these needs: the very high den¬ 
sity of the floppy-disk drive provides enough total 
storage; the separation of programs and data is ac¬ 
complished partly by the ROM and partly by the RAM 
disk; and because the operating system is in ROM in¬ 
stead of on a disk and the RAM of the Integral auto¬ 
matically includes a RAM-disk function, you can put pro¬ 
grams on the RAM disk and data files on the floppy. As 
an added benefit. RAM-disk programs run faster than 
those on a floppy disk. Finally, the development team 
felt that the high-density floppy and the RAM disk made 
up a perfectly capable pair of devices for backing up 
files. For those reasons, and to save on space and power, 
the team decided to leave out a second disk drive. 

The use of ROM for the operating system was a big 
challenge: UNIX likes to have a disk drive at its disposal. 
The HP team had to “tune'' their UNIX so that it didn’t 
do that. The ROM solution provides that the root file 
is on the RAM disk, so when UNIX comes up. the only 
file system it presumes to exist is the RAM disk. 

You can have more mass storage (externally) if you 
want it. Through the Integral's I/O interface you can use 
any of HP's many storage peripherals. All of the software 
drivers—such as for a hard disk—are already built in. 

ThinkJet Printer 

One of the features that makes the Integral unusually 
“integrated" is the built-in ink-jet printer (see “The 
Hewlett-Packard ThinkJet Printer" by Mark Haas in the 
January BYTE, page 337). The ThinkJet is also a product 
of the Corvallis division of Hewlett-Packard and the 
Integral team was intimately asso- 

(continued) 


The Integral PC's 
electroluminescent, 
flat-screen display is 
its centerpiece. 



FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 101 























Photo 4: 

The Integral Personal Computer's keyboard. 



ciated with its development. 

As an ink-jet printer, the Thinkjet is 
quiet and fast. The characters it pro¬ 
duces are near letter quality. The 
Thinklet can print in a number of dif¬ 
ferent fonts and can also handle 
black-and-white graphics. The In¬ 
tegral's keyboard has a Print key that 
immediately cues a dump of the screen's contents to the 
Thinkjet. 

One small drawback of the printer's placement is that 
there is no good place to put the paper—that is, if you 
put the pile of blank paper just behind the computer, 
the system takes up a lot more room. 

The Thinklet is generally simple to load and use but 
doesn't have a platen knob. Therefore, you have to be 
careful not to overrun when using the line-feed and form¬ 
feed buttons. 

Mouse 

The Integral's optional mouse is HP's standard two- 
button, mechanical contraption that uses a steel ball 
beneath a circular palm grip. The plug-in position (on 
the left side of the unit) is slightly awkward for a right- 
handed user because the cable must run behind the 
keyboard. The mouse's left button is called the "click¬ 
ing" button (for selection) and the right is called the 
"right" button (for mode changing). 

Software 

The Integral runs HP-UX 2.1, which HP calls a "vanilla" 
UNIX environment, and the Personal Applications Man¬ 
ager (photos 2 and 3), HP's operating-environment shell 
(see "The HP 150" by Phil Lemmons and Barbara Robert¬ 
son in the October 1983 BYTE, page 36, and "The HP 
110" in the )une 1984 BYTE, page 111). The Integral's win¬ 
dows emulate terminals that report back at 9600 bits per 
second, have 80 characters by 24 lines, and use normal 
escape sequences. As Tim Williams puts it, "We think 
the UNIX wave is just beginning. And as the UNIX wave 
rolls along we want to roll with it and 
help it to grow." Ray Fajardo noted 


that a lot of development time was 
devoted to making the Integral run 
most UNIX software without modi¬ 
fication. The primary goal was System 
III compatibility: a secondary goal was 
flexibility. The system can dynamical¬ 
ly configure drivers and make oper¬ 
ating-system patches on the fly, so the 
environment is standard yet can be specialized by in¬ 
dependent software vendors. According to HP, HP-UX's 
flexibility enables it to emulate Venix, System V, and 
other UNIX derivatives. Over 50 utilities, commands, and 
standard applications are included with the system. 

How hard was it to put UNIX in ROM? "We first did 
it the same way we do a disk operating system," says 
Andy Rood. "We just took what would have been our 
200K boot image, put it in ROM, and put a little power- 
on preamble that copied it to RAM just as a bootstrap 
up for disk." They then embellished the first version by 
making the code execute directly from the ROM and 
made some flexibility modifications by linking ROM 
through RAM jump tables. Any bugs that turn up in the 
ROM now can be masked by intercepting and isolating 
ROM routines. The kernel is in the ROM and is treated 
as another disk device. At the time the machine is 
started, the ROM disk—which has both the PAM shell and 
the traditional UNIX init process—is configured. The ROM 
looks like shared memory for user libraries and pro¬ 
grams. There also is a demon in the background to do 
the disk handling. The HP-UX system is supported by 
real-time extensions (BCD [binary coded decimal|, HPIL 
[Hewlett-Packard Interface Loop|, HPIB, RS-232C, and in¬ 
strumentation I/O) and device-independent libraries, as 
well as HP Technical BASIC. 

User Interface 

The Integral's user interface (windows, graphics, function 
keys, and optional mouse) were Jon Brewster's respon¬ 
sibility He explained that the original reason for windows 
was to provide users with more than one interface to 
the product. HP had discovered that 
even novice users use multitasking 


Although the Integral 
is compatible with 
UNIX System III, it 
emulates other versions. 



BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 






















Photo 5: 

T he Integral PC with keyboard in place. 


and keep multiple programs on the 
display. The windowing system, then, 
had to allow novices to do multitask¬ 
ing without worrying about fore¬ 
ground, background, priorities, and 
scheduling. Because the mouse was 
to be (and is) optional, the windows 
had to work well with and without it. 

Also, unlike the Macintosh, the Integral allows you to 
move windows while they are being updated: windows 
are moved by animating a sprite (which resembles a cor¬ 
ner of the window) and positioning it—rather than mov¬ 
ing the entire window. Thus, you can hide windows (they 
appear as title lines in the lower left of the display), 
stretch them (by choosing a new bottom right comer with 
a sprite), move them (by choosing a new top left corner 
with a sprite), and shuffle them (the top window being 
the only one with which you can interface directly, 
although the others can still be active). 

Applications 

According to HP, a variety of software packages will be 
available within 60 days of the Integral's introduction. 
These include Microsoft's Multiplan, Officeware's Script 
and Plan, Ashton-'fate's dBASE III, HP's MemoMaker, Data 
and Calculator, HP-UX software development tools, and 
others. 

More software is being developed both at HP's per¬ 
sonal software division and by independent vendors who 
have already been alerted to the Integral's introduction. 
Also, because of the compatibility of HP "technical BASIC, 
many programs for other HP systems, such as Series 200 
and 500 products, will immediately run on the Integral. 

Documentation 

Although the documentation I viewed was only in the 
draft stage, HP has given plenty of attention to the litera¬ 
ture explaining its system. The documentation is clear 
and thorough. Beginners will spend the most time with 
the Personal Tutor disk and booklet, a tutorial that takes 
an estimated eight hours to fully ab- 
sorb. Lessons include use of the 


mouse, windows, and the organiza¬ 
tion, viewing, printing, and creating of 
files. The Integral's documentation 
also includes a cartoon booklet that 
explains how to set up and start up 
the system, and a reference guide. H n 
claims that the documentation, user 
interface, and PAM will have novices 
working on the system within 30 minutes. 

Price and Conclusions 

The Integral Personal Computer is priced at $4990 (with 
HP-UX, PAM, and HP Windows). Although the price is 
high for a single-disk-drive system, the perceived price/ 
value ratio depends on what class of computer you com¬ 
pare the Integral to. HP would like it to be compared 
to the higher-performance (and higher-priced) UNIX 
machines, rather than MS-DOS transportables such as 
the Compaq. 

The big question is, who will buy the Integral? Perhaps 
business and technical professionals whose require¬ 
ments push the limitations of today's 16-bit MS-DOS 
machines. Certainly computer science students and engi¬ 
neers will see many advantages to a complete UNIX 
system they can take home. And with the benefits of 
multitasking, HP may pull in more people: imagine hav¬ 
ing several data-communications cards, each hooked to 
a different electronic information service, and all com¬ 
municating while you work on a spreadsheet and a word 
processor. 

The HP Integral Personal Computers advantages in¬ 
clude: state-of-the-art technology: the “everything you 
need in one box" design: engineering that looks ab¬ 
solutely solid, and a multitasking environment—all from 
a company with a great engineering track record. On the 
minus side: the list of software available for the Integral 
PC is short, and the price may be too high. But for those 
who need advanced computing power and who want to 
cast their votes against the IBM PC and its various com¬ 
patibles, the HP Integral Personal Computer may be the 
best argument yet for biting the bullet 
and switching to UNIX. ■ 


The Integral's user 
interface lets you 
move, hide, stretch, 
and shuffle windows. 


FEBRUARY 1985 ‘BYTE 103 










104 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


PHOTOGRAPHED BY PAUL AVIS. 









CIARCIA’S CIRCU IT CELLAR 


BUILD A 
SERIAL EPROM 
PROGRAMMER 

by Steve Ciarcia 


An inexpensive way to put 
your programs on a chip 


Over the years, many ar¬ 
ticles have been pub¬ 
lished on programming 
EPROMs (erasable pro¬ 
grammable read-only 
memories). The number 
of articles alone indicates 
the value of an EPROM programmer and 
the interest expressed in the subject. Ttue- 
blooded computer experimenters consider 
an EPROM programmer as essential a tool 
as a soldering iron and a DVM (digital 
voltmeter). 

Most EPROM programmers designed for 
personal computers are implemented as 
bus-dependent I/O (input/output) peripheral 
cards that use computer-specific, machine- 
language driver programs. By eliminating 
the need for an enclosure and using the 
system power supply, a relatively cost- 
effective unit can be produced. Unfor¬ 
tunately, if I designed such a unit, it prob¬ 
ably wouldn’t be for the computer you own. 

For computer users who don't have ex¬ 
pansion buses or who want their EPROM 
programmer to be transportable between 
systems, the only alternative is a stand¬ 
alone EPROM programmer attached to a 
serial port (much like a modem). Making it 
a separate peripheral device, however, 
necessarily increases its cost. In fact, exter¬ 
nal serial-port EPROM programmers are fre¬ 
quently two or three times the cost of 


board-level units. 

A certain portion of the cost is due to its 
separate power supply and enclosure, but 
most of the expense is attributed to the 
features that manufacturers generally incor¬ 
porate in the devices. The majority of stand¬ 
alone serial-connected programmers are, in 
fact, designed as intelligent EPROM pro¬ 
grammers that have the basic processing 
power and memory of whole computers. I 
have taken this approach on previous 
designs. Such devices perform well and re¬ 
quire little assistance from the host system 
beyond the data to be programmed. 

This time I'm approaching the problem 
differently. I've decided to keep it simple 
and design the most universally applicable 
and cost-effective programmer that I can. 

The latest Circuit Cellar EPROM program¬ 
mer is a serial-port programmer that has the 
speed of a turtle, the intelligence of the 
mightiest computer (that is, it has absolutely 
no smarts of its own), and is as functional 
as a doorstop between uses. On the posi¬ 
tive side, it's fully documented, universally 
applicable, and easily expandable to ac- 

(continued) 

Steve Ciarcia (pronounced "see-ARE-see-ah") is an elec¬ 
tronics engineer and computer consultant with experience 
in process control. digital design, nuclear instrumenta¬ 
tion. and product development. He is the author of 
several books about electronics. You can write to him 
at POB 582, Glastonbury. CT 06033. 



COPYRIGHT © 1985 STEVEN A. CIARCIA. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 105 







commodate future EPROM types. 

The serial-port programmer can be 
operated from almost any system with 
a serial port. The driver software is 
written completely in BASIC with no 
machine-language routines. The 
serial-port programmer offers all the 
hardware features to program 2716, 
2732, 2732A, 2764. and 27128 
EPROMS through a serial port, in¬ 
cluding: RS-232C compatibility, no 
handshaking necessary, internal 
power supplies, jumper-selectable 
EPROM types, and jumper-selectable 
data rates. 

The BASIC-language driver program 
included offers features such as: 

• menu-driven operation using single 
keystrokes 

• a help routine that can be called at 
any time 

• single-byte or burst-write modes 

• read or copy EPROM 

• optional programming from a disk 
file 

• verify after write 

• verify EPROM erasure 

• screen-dump routines by page or 
byte 

• single-stepping mode 

• software-controlled read/write 
mode select 

• BASIC driver that can be user- 
modified 

Reviewing EPROM Basics 

A personal computer, even in its 
minimum configuration, always con¬ 
tains some user-programmable mem¬ 


ory or RAM (random-access read/ 
write memory), usually in the form of 
semiconductor-memory integrated 
circuits. This memory can contain 
both programs and data and can be 
read or modified as needed. 

Any of several kinds of electronic 
components can function as bit- 
storage elements in this kind of mem¬ 
ory. TTL (transistor-transistor logic) 
type-7474 flip-flops, bistable relays, or 
tiny ferrite toroids (memory cores) are 
suitable, but they all cost too much, 
are hard to use, and have other dis¬ 
advantages. 

In personal computer and other 
microprocessor-based applications, 
the most cost-effective memory is 
made from MOS (metal-oxide semi¬ 
conductor) ICs (integrated circuits). 
Unfortunately, data stored in these 
semiconductor RAMs is volatile. 
When the power is turned off, the 
data is lost. Many ways of dealing with 
this problem have been devised, with 
essential programs and data usually 
stored in some nonvolatile medium. 

In most computer systems, some 
data or programs are stored in non¬ 
volatile ROM (read-only memory). A 
semiconductor ROM can be random¬ 
ly accessed for reading in the same 
manner as the volatile memory, but 
the data in the ROM is permanent. In 
a mask-programmed ROM. the data 
that can be read is determined dur¬ 
ing the manufacturing process. When¬ 
ever power is supplied to the ROM, 
this permanent data (or program) is 
available. In small computer systems. 


ROM is chiefly used to contain 
operating systems and/or BASIC 
interpreters—programs that don't 
need to be changed. 

Another type of ROM is the PROM 
(programmable read-only memory). A 
PROM component is delivered con¬ 
taining no data. The user decides 
what data it should contain and per¬ 
manently programs it with a special 
programming device. Once initially 
programmed, PROMs exhibit the 
characteristics of mask-programmed 
ROMs. You might label such PROMs 
as write-once memories. 

The EPROM, which is ultraviolet- 
light-erasable, is a compromise be¬ 
tween the write-once kind of PROM 
and the volatile memory. You can 
think of the EPROM as a read-mostly 
memory, used in read-only mode 
most of the time but occasionally 
erased and reprogrammed as neces¬ 
sary. The EPROM is erased by expos¬ 
ing the silicon chip to ultraviolet light 
at a wavelength of 2 537 angstroms. 
Conveniently, most EPROM chips are 
packaged in an enclosure with a trans¬ 
parent quartz window. 

How an EPROM Works 

EPROMs store data bits in cells 
formed from stored-charge FAMOS 
(floating-gate avalanche-injection 
metal-oxide semiconductor) tran¬ 
sistors. Such transistors are similar to 
positive-channel silicon-gate field- 
effect transistors, but they have two 
gates. The lower or floating gate is com¬ 
pletely surrounded by an insulator 
layer of silicon dioxide: the upper con¬ 
trol or select gate is connected to ex¬ 
ternal circuitry. 

The amount of electric charge 
stored on the floating gate determines 
whether the bit cell contains a 1 or a 
0. Charged cells are read as Os; un¬ 
charged cells are read as Is. When the 
EPROM chip comes from the factory, 
all bit locations are cleared of charge 
and are read as logic Is; each byte 
contains hexadecimal FF. 

When a given bit cell is to be 
burned from a 1 to a 0, a current is 
passed through the transistor's chan¬ 
nel from the source to the gate. (The 
electrons, of course, move the op¬ 
posite way.) At the same time, a 
relatively high voltage potential is 
placed on the transistor's upper select 
gate, creating a strong electric field 
within the layers of semiconductor 

( continued ) 












A 7 (T 


El v cc 

Vp p e 


E v cc 

a 6 (T 


El a 8 

A) 2 E 


TT] pgm 

a 5 (T 


HI A 9 

A, E 


m nc 

a. E 

2716 

El v P p 

A 6 E 

2764 

E A a 

A 3 E 


IE 0E 

a 5 (T 


E A 9 

a 2 E 


m a io 

a 4 (T 


E A n 

A1 E 


Te] cI/pgm 

a 3 E 


IT] 0E 

Ao E 


El 0 7 

a 2 E 


E A io 

o 0 E 


E °6 

A 1 E 


m ci 

o, [To 


m °5 

A 0 [To 


E °7 

02 QT 


E °4 

o 0 (TT 


E °6 

GND [T7 


E °3 

Oi [TT 


E °5 



o 2 (TT 


E °4 



GND [TT 


E °3 


Figure 1: Pinouts of tfie 2716 and 2764 EPROMs. 


106 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 















Figure 2: The serial-port EPROM programmer. 


c 

> 



o 

■^1 






























































































































































































































































material. (This is the function of the 
+ 21- or +2 5-volt [V| V pp charging 
potential applied to the EPROM.) In 
the presence of this strong electric 
field, some of the electrons passing 
through the source-drain channel gain 
enough energy to tunnel through the 
insulating layer that normally isolates 
the floating gate. As the tunneling 
electrons accumulate on the floating 
gate, the gate takes on a negative 
charge, which makes the cell contain 
a 0. 

When data is to be erased from the 
chip, it is exposed to ultraviolet light, 
which contains photons of relatively 
high energy. The incident photons ex¬ 


cite the electrons on the floating gate 
to sufficiently high energy states that 
they can tunnel back through the in¬ 
sulating layer, removing the charge 
from the gate and returning the cell 
to the 1 state. 

The 2700 family of EPROMs con¬ 
tains bit-storage cells configured as in¬ 
dividually addressable bytes. This 
organization is often called "2K by 8" 
for a 2716 or "8K by 8" for a 2764. 
Figure 1 shows the 2716 and 2764. 
The completely static operation of 
these devices requires no clock 
signals. The primary operating modes 
include read, standby, and program 
(program-inhibit and program-verify 


Table 1: Power supply and ground pin numbers for figures 2 and 3. 


1C Number 

Type 

Ground 

5 V 

12 V 

-12 V 

IC1 

AY3-1015 

pin 3 

pin 1 



IC2 

74LSI75 

pin 8 

pin 16 



IC3.4.5 

74LS374 

pin 10 

pin 20 



IC6 

74LS00 

pin 7 

pin 14 



IC7 

74 LSI 4 

pin 7 

pin 14 



IC8 

NE555 

pin 1 

pin 8 



IC9 

74LS02 

pin 7 

pin 14 



IC10 

MCI 488 

pin 7 


pin 14 

pin 1 

IC11 

MCI 489 

pin 7 

pin 14 



IC12 

74LS04 

pin 7 

pin 14 



IC13 

CD74HC4040 

pin 8 

pin 16 




4.9152MHz 



u> ~^ 


DATA-RATE GENERATOR 


Figure 3: Serial interface and data-rate generator. 


modes are important primarily in 
high-volume applications). 

Control inputs are used to select the 
chip and configure it for one of these 
operating modes. In the program 
mode, particular bit cells are induced 
to contain 0 values. Both Is and Os are 
present in the data word presented 
on the data lines, but only the 
presence of a 0 causes action to take 
place. To program the 2716 EPROM, 
the V pp input is made +2 5 V and the 
OE input is at a high TTL level. Then, 
the TTL-level data to be programmed 
for a specific address is set up on the 
2716's data lines, and the address is 
set up on address lines AO through 
A10. After a setup time of at least 2 
microseconds (/*s), a high TTLrlevel 
programming pulse 50 milliseconds 
(ms) long is applied to the CE/PGM in¬ 
put. Addresses to be programmed 
may be specified in any order. 

The 50-ms programming pulse must 
be applied once for each location to 
be programmed (under no circum¬ 
stances should a^onstant high level 
be applied to the CE/PGM input in the 
program mode). Repeated 50-ms 
pulses to the same location are ac¬ 
ceptable. but any pulse width greater 
than 55 ms might destroy the chip. 
The minimum pulse width is 45 ms. 

Circuit Description 

Figures 2, 3, and 4 show the sche¬ 
matic drawings for the serial-port 
EPROM programmer, the RS-232C in¬ 
terface, and the four-voltage power 
supply. Table 1 shows the power- 
supply connections for the sche¬ 
matics. The main element in figure 2 
is the AY-3-1015 UART (universal asyn¬ 
chronous receiver/transmitter). The 
UART converts serial information sent 
from the computer into parallel infor¬ 
mation used in the programmer. This 
parallel data appears on pins 5 
through 12 of the UART receiver bus. 
The UART can also pass information 
back to the computer by converting 
any parallel information present on 
pins 26 through 33 of the transmitter 
bus into serial information. The serial 
information is received from the com¬ 
puter on pin 20 and transmitted to the 
computer on pin 2 5. 

A logic high level on pin 21 resets 
and initializes the UART. This level is 
generated as a power-on reset (PWR) 
every time the power to the program¬ 
mer is turned on or the manual reset 
button pressed. This PWR also clears 


108 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 
















































the receiver character counter, IC2. 

UART pins 35 through 39 set the 
format of the serial transmission be¬ 
tween the computer and the program¬ 
mer. (I chose to hard-wire these op¬ 
tions rather than provide option 
switches that are rarely used.) As 
shown, the UART is configured for an 
8-bit character length with 1 stop bit 
and parity checking inhibited. If your 
computer requires 2 stop bits, con¬ 
nect pin 36 to + 5 V instead of ground. 
The programmer will operate at any 
desired data rate up to and including 
9600 bits per second (bps). A soft¬ 
ware delay loop keeps the program¬ 
mer from being swamped. 

The programmer requires 4 bytes to 
be sent from the computer for each 
location read from or written to in the 
EPROM. This 4-byte protocol elimi¬ 
nates the need for incremental 
counters and sophisticated decision 
logic in the programmer. It does, 
however, reduce the speed of read 
and erasure-verification operations. 

The first 3 bytes received are 
latched a byte at a time into latches 
IC3, IC4, and IC5. The latching pulses 
are generated by 1C2, which is con¬ 
figured as a 4-bit byte counter. Each 
time a byte is received by the UART, 
an RDA (received data available) pulse 
is generated at pin 19 of the UART. 
This pulse is used to clock IC2 and is 
gated back to the RDAV (reset data 
available) line, pin 18, to clear the 
receiver section of the UART. As the 
counter clocks, the leading edges of 
its output latch the data from the 
UART into IC3, IC4, or IC5. The 
counter is reset by the PWR line or 
when the fourth byte is received. 

The first byte received by the pro¬ 
grammer contains the most significant 
3 to 6 bits of the EPROM address 
(depending upon the EPROM type) 
and 1 bit to select either the read or 
write mode of operation. A logic 1 in 
bit 7 sets the write mode; a logic 0 
sets the read mode. 

The second byte contains the lower 
8 bits of the EPROM address. 

The third byte contains the data to 
be programmed into the addressed 
location when it is in the write mode 
or a dummy character when in the 
read mode. 

The fourth byte contains dummy 
data in both the read and write 
modes. When the counter increments 
with the reception of the fourth byte, 
it causes IC2 to reset. The time be¬ 


tween setting this output bit and 
clearing the counter is about 100 
nanoseconds (ns). This short pulse 
concluding the setup of the address 
and data is used to trigger the actual 
programming pulse to the EPROM. 

The programming pulse to the 
EPROM is generated by IC8. which is 
configured as a 50-ms one-shot (trig¬ 
gered by the reception of the fourth 
byte). The programming pulse is fed 
to the EPROM at several different 
locations, depending on which 
EPROM is being programmed and 
how the EPROM selection jumper 
block (see figure 5) is configured. 

The one-shot is functional only 
when the mode select line (R/W, 
read/not write) IC3 pin 2 is a logic 0, 
setting the write mode. The mode 
select line is also used to select the 
programming voltage ranges of the 
various EPROMs. When configured 
for a 2732 or a 2716 EPROM, a low 
on the mode select line sets the V pp 
supply to a 25-V level. For all other 
EPROM types, the V pp supply is set to 
a 21-V level. 

Depending on the configuration of 
the jumper block, the mode select 
line sets the proper TTL levels at the 
CE and OE pins to place the various 
EPROMs in the read or write mode. 
A logic high on the mode select line 
causes the V pp supply to drop to 0 V 
for the 2732 and 2732A EPROMs and 
to 5 V for the other types. 

The mode select line also functions 
as the output enable line of data latch 


IC5. When the programmer is in the 
write mode, data from the UART is 
latched and directed to the EPROM 
data bus for programming. When the 
programmer is in the read mode, IC5's 
output is disabled, and the EPROM 
data-bus contents are transmitted 
back to the computer. 

LEDs (light-emitting diodes) 1. 2, 
and 3 indicate when power is on and 
when read and write pulses occur. 
They are not necessary to the opera¬ 
tion of the programmer and are mere¬ 
ly included as visual aids. 

Figure 3 shows the serial-interface 
connections and the data-rate 
generator. IC10 and 1C11 are standard 
RS-232C transmitter and receiver 
chips that conform to the EIA (Elec¬ 
tronic Industries Association) stan¬ 
dard for RS-232C transmission. (If 
your computer needs a handshaking 
signal, the 50-ms write pulse can be 
connected to the clear-to-send line. It 
is not used with the software pre¬ 
sented in this article.) The serial-com¬ 
munication rate between the pro¬ 
grammer and the computer is jumper- 
selectable. A 4.9152-MHz oscillator 
is divided down through a 
CD74HC4040 (it must include the HC 
designation to accommodate the high 
frequency) to produce the appropri¬ 
ate clock rate for the UART. 

Figure 4 shows the power supply 
used with the programmer. The power 
transformer I chose was 22 V CT 
(center tap), but any transformer from 

( continued ) 


+ 12 V 



Figure 4: Power supply. 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 109 






























22 to 2 5.6V CT is adequate. The 
secondary output of the transformer 
is full-wave rectified, filtered, and then 
regulated to +12 V, + 5 V, and - 12 V. 
Only the + 5-V supply needs an actual 
IC regulator; less stringent zener 
regulation is adequate for the 12-V 


supplies to the RS-232C drivers. 

The 3 5-V output consists of com¬ 
ponents C4, C5. D3. and D4 con¬ 
nected as a cascade voltage doubler 
with half-wave rectification. This con¬ 
figuration produces an input of ap¬ 
proximately 32 to 34 V to the LM317/ 


338 regulator. The minimum accept¬ 
able voltage at the input is 28.5 V (for 
a 2 5-V output). If you use a higher- 
output transformer than 22 V CT. be 
careful that the input to the V pp 
regulator doesn't exceed 3 5 V. If it 
does, additional preregulation may be 
necessary to use this circuit. 

Figure 6 shows the programmable 
V pp supply. The 2732A EPROM re¬ 
quires the programming voltage to be 
pulsed between 0 and 21 V. while a 
2716 requires a pulse between 5 and 
2 5 V. The supply is controlled by the 
jumper connections and the mode 
select line. With jumper #1 across R6. 
the supply is configured for a max¬ 
imum V pp level of 21V. When it is 
removed, the supply has a maximum 
voltage of 2 5 V. 

The minimum V pp level is set by two 
jumper-selectable programming cir¬ 
cuits, which are also connected to the 
regulator's output set point-adjust 
line. When jumper #2 is installed, a 
two-transistor circuit is enabled, which 
applies - 1.2 V to the adjust line. The 
result is a 0-V output from the 
regulator. When jumper #3 is in¬ 
stalled. the reference-adjust line is set 
to allow a + 5-V regulator output. 

Interacting with Hardware 

The operation of the serial program¬ 
mer should become clear by follow¬ 
ing an example of a write operation 
followed by a read operation. This is 
the sequence that would necessarily 
occur during a standard write-and- 
verify cycle. 

First, the EPROM programmer is 
cleared and set to the read mode by 
the power-on reset pulse (which can 
be generated by pressing a button or 
by turning the programmer on) so 
that it is ready to receive the first 
character. If we plan a write cycle, the 
first character must contain a logic 1 
in bit 8 to activate the write mode. The 
upper 3 to 6 bits of the EPROM ad¬ 
dress (the page address that depends 
on the size of the EPROM) must also 
appear in the first 3 to 6 bits (bit 0 
through bit 5) of this first character. 
Each character of data to be pro¬ 
grammed into the EPROM is sent to 
the programmer as a 4-byte transmis¬ 
sion with the programming address 
specified each time. 

Tkble 2 indicates the allowable bit 
patterns for this first character re¬ 
ceived by the programmer. 

For our example, assume that the 



2716 



2764 


J1 • 


24 

1 < 


* 24 

J2 < 









3 < 


i 22 

J3 ' 






J4 < 



4 » 


•21 

J5 ' 


• 20 




J6 < 






J7 < 



/ ’ 


} lo 

J8 < 






J9 < 



9 > 


>16 

J10 • 


* 15 




Jll < 






J12 < 


»13 

12 < 


•13 


2732 A 



2732 


1 < 


• 24 

1 < 


• 24 

2 1 


£ 3 C ' 


1 t O 

i IQ 

6 < 


' 1^7 

i V7 

O ’ 

Q , 


, 17 

8 < 


> if 

i ic 

o 1 

Q , 


1 if 

> 16 

9 < 


1 lo 

1 0 l 


• 13 

12 ' 


1 lo 

i C 




27128 





1 < 


24 




3 ' 


22 




4 < 


>21 




7 < 


> 18 




9 i 


•16 




11 < 


• 14 




12 < 


> 13 





Figure 5: Configuration jumpers. 


110 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 





















































data byte C3 (hexadecimal) is to be 
written into the first byte of page 4 in 
the EPROM. In this case the first 
character received by the program¬ 
mer should be 1x000100. The receipt 
of this character pulses IC2 and 
latches the page address and mode 
select bit into the page/mode latch, 
IC3. The mode select bit selects the 
EPROM for a write cycle, turns on the 


V pp supply to the EPROM, releases 
the reset line on the timer, activates 
the output enable line of the data 
latch, and shuts off the transmission 
gate of the UART. 

The second character sent contains 
the lower 8 address bits for the 
EPROM. To program the first location 
in page 4, the rest of the address must 
then be 00000000. This character sets 


the second stage of the counter and 
latches the lower address location 
into the lower address latch, IC4. 

The third character, 11000011 (C3 
hexadecimal), contains data to be pro¬ 
grammed into the EPROM. When this 
character is received, the counter 
latches the data into the data latch, 
IC5. 

The fourth character sent is a 
dummy character that may contain 
any value. This fourth and last char¬ 
acter simply clocks IC2 and triggers 
the 50-ms programming pulse. When 
the one-shot times out, the program¬ 
mer is still in the write mode. It has 
to be set to the read mode by ini¬ 
tiating a read cycle. 

The four characters sent in our pres¬ 
ent example of a write sequence are 
1x000100, which sets the write mode 
and upper address; 00000000, which 
sets the lower address; 11000011, 
which sets the data byte (C3 hexadec¬ 
imal); and xxxxxxxx, dummy data. 

The read sequence is similar to the 
write sequence. The first character 

( continued ) 


T^ble 2: Allowable bit patterns. 


Page 

Write Mode 

Read Mode 

0 

1x000000 

0x000000 

1 

1x000001 

0x000001 

2 

1x000010 

0x000010 

3 

1x000011 

0x000011 

4 

1x000100 

0x000100 

5 

1x000101 

0x000101 

6 

1x000110 

0x000110 

7 

1x000111 

0x000111 

64 

1x111111 

0x111111 


w '"r> 

32-35 VOLTS 1 -^ 


LM317/LM338 
IN OUT 

ADJ 


c 


IK 

-y&r- 


4.7K 
-AAAr- 


m 


Q1 

2N2222 


470 a 

-AAA#- 


IN4732 


-12V 


03 


2N2905 




; 470& : 

• 470a 

-< 

s 3 


R7 

510& 


rh 


-O v p p 


R4 

150 SI 


R5 

2.4K 


R5 + R6 SETS 25V 
R5 SETS 21V 




R6 

470& 



02 

2N2222 


(2732) JJ2 JJ3 (2716.2764.27128) 
| 22 


R/W O 

v cc 


|3j2 


:^r 


READ 

WRITE 


1 FOR 


25V 

2716 

5V 


25V 

2732 

ov 


21V 

2732 A 

OV 


21V 

2764 

27128 


5V 


Figure 6: Close-up of the programmable V pp supply. 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 111 























































sent again contains the upper bits of 
the address, but bit 8 is now set to 
logic 0 to put the mode select line 
high (read mode). A logic 1 on the 
read/write line deactivates the pro¬ 
gramming one-shot and tristates the 
data latch. IC5. 

Again, the first character is latched 
into the page/mode latch, and the sec¬ 
ond character is latched into the lower 
address latch. With IC5 tristated. the 
EPROM’s data output is placed on the 
UART transmitter bus. The third char¬ 
acter is a dummy character that is 
used to clock IC2. This signal causes 
the UART to transmit the data on the 
transmitter bus to the computer. The 


fourth character is then sent to the 
programmer to reset the counter. 

The four characters that must be 
sent in the verify sequence of our ex¬ 
ample are 0x000100. which sets the 
read mode and upper page address; 
00000000, which sets the lower 
address; xxxxxxxx, which gets the 
data byte from the EPROM (C3 hexa¬ 
decimal); and xxxxxxxx. which resets 
the programmer. 

Programmer Software 

The driver program shown in listing 
1 could have been written in any lan¬ 
guage that supports input and output 
ports. [Tfiis program is available for down¬ 


loading from BYTE net Listings at (603) 
924-9820. You can also receive it by send¬ 
ing an IBM PC-formatted disk and return 
postage to Steve C iarcia.] BASIC was 
chosen because it has wide appeal in 
the personal computer field and 
because most systems with serial I/O 
ports support BASIC. The software 
(flow-diagramed in figure 7) was writ¬ 
ten specifically for the IBM PC but can 
be easily modified to conform to most 
other systems that also support 
Microsoft BASIC. The program was 
written with a short MAIN program 
module that calls a number of subrou¬ 
tine modules. This modular approach 
makes modifying, debugging, or ex- 



Figure 7: A flowchart of the driver program. 


112 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 



































































panding the software a much easier 
task. Examining the driver software 
should provide enough understand¬ 
ing so that any additions or changes 
desired can be easily implemented. 

The program modules that access 
the serial port are labeled READ A 
BYTE and WRITE A BYTE in listing 1. 
These sections contain the only soft¬ 
ware modules that are hardware-de¬ 
pendent and that need to be con¬ 
figured to your particular system. 

The WRITE module performs the 
actual program burn of the data into 
the EPROM. The first statement sends 
the page address to the serial port 
with the value of bit 8 set to 1. This 


is accomplished by combining the 
page address with the value 128 
(10000000 binary). The page address 
is calculated elsewhere in the pro¬ 
gram before entering this module. 
The next statement sends the lower 
address contained in the variable 
BYTE to the serial port. This value is 
also calculated by the program prior 
to entering the WRITE module. 

The statement "PRINT #3,DATUM" 
sends the data to be written into the 
EPROM to the serial port. The last 
statement in the WRITE module is a 
timing loop that causes the program 
to pause while the 50-ms timer in the 
serial-port programmer times out. 


The READ module requests a data 
byte from the programmer and 
receives the byte from the serial port. 
It accomplishes this by sending a 
page address and byte address to the 
serial port as in the WRITE module. 
In this case, bit 8 of the page address 
is set to 0 to inform the programmer 
that a read cycle is being performed. 
The next two lines send a dummy 
data value and a strobe to the serial 
port to complete the read sequence. 
The values of DUMMY and STROBE 
are set in the INITIALIZATION 
module. The data sent by the serial- 
port programmer is received in the 
variable RDATA. 

Once these modules have been 
configured to your system, it is a sim¬ 
ple matter to write and read data from 
the programmer. Simply define the 
PAGE and BYTE address variables 
along with the DATUM value and send 
them to your serial port by calling the 
appropriate module. The rest of the 
program in listing 1 shows methods 
for doing this. 

The approach used in the program 
is to place any data to be pro¬ 
grammed into the EPROM in an array 
so that it can be reviewed and edited 
prior to burning it permanently into 
the EPROM. The array name is appro¬ 
priately called ARRAY! )• The high- 
order byte of every element in AR¬ 
RAY!) stores a flag bit indicating that 
the lower-order byte of the element 
is data to be programmed. This 
method allows the program to write 
to only those locations in the EPROM 
where a valid data value has been 
entered in ARRAY!). 

Each time a data value is put into 
ARRAY!), the value is combined with 
2 56 to set the flag. When it is time to 
send all the data to the EPROM, the 
flag is checked in each element, and 
only those elements with the flag bit 
set are sent to the EPROM. This pro¬ 
cess is repeated until all the flagged 
elements have been programmed. 
The initial values for ARRAY!) are 
taken directly from the EPROM by 
reading each location and storing the 
values in ARRAY!). 

Several methods of entering data 
into ARRAY!) are used in the program. 
One method is to enter each data 
value directly from the keyboard; an¬ 
other method is to fill ARRAY!) by 
reading an already-programmed 
EPROM. Finally, a disk file previously 

( continued) 



FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 113 






































Listing 1: EPROM programmer routines. 


1000 

1010 

1020 

1030 

1060 

1070 

1090 

1100 

1110 

1120 

1130 

1140 

1150 

1160 

1170 

1190 

1200 

1210 

1230 

1240 

1260 

1270 

1280 

1290 

1300 

1310 

1330 

1340 

1350 

1360 

1370 

1380 

1390 

1410 

1420 

1440 

1450 

1460 

1470 

1490 

1500 

1510 

1520 

1530 

1540 

1550 

1560 

1570 

1580 

1600 

1610 

1620 

1630 

1640 

1660 

1670 

1690 

1700 

1710 

1720 

1730 

1740 

1750 

1760 

1770 

1780 

1790 

1800 

1810 

1820 

1830 

1850 

1860 

1870 

1880 

1890 

1900 

1910 

1920 


REM SERIAL EPROM PROGRAMMER 

REM written in 

REM MICROSOFT BASIC for the IBM PC 

REM INITIALIZATION ROUTINE 
KEY OFF 

LINE25$= BAUD RATE=\ \EPROM=\ \ BASE PAGE=\ \” 

BR$ = "0000”: EPS = BR$:BP$ = BR$ 

DEFINT A-Z:ON ERROR GOTO 4600 

STROBE = 255:DUMMY - 255:PAGE = 0:BYTE = 0: DATUM = 255 

K$ = "VPNEOWHDIBSL":FORMAT$ = 'PAGE=\\ BYTE=\\ DATA=\\" 

MIMAGE = 0:MCRADDR = &H3FC:DELAY = 100 

REM MAIN BODY OF PROGRAM — KEYBOARD SEQUENCE 
GOSUB 2250 

PRINT" = = = = = = = = = = SERIAL EPROM PROGRAMMER = = = = = = = = = = 
PRINT" BAUD-RATE SELECTION" 

PRINT'The SERIAL PORT programmer can operate at several different baud" 

PRINT"rates. Select the baud rate for your system from the list below." 

PRINT" (1) 300 baud" 

PRINT" (2) 600 baud" 

PRINT" (3) 1200 baud" 

PRINT" (4) 2400 baud" 

PRINT" (5) 4800 baud" 

PRINT" (6) 9600 baud" 

PRINT"Enter the number of your selection — > ";:BAUD$ = INPUT$(1) 

PRINT BAUDS:BAUD = VAL(BAUD$):IF BAUD>0 AND BAUD<7 THEN 1360 
PRINT" < < < < < BAUD-RATE SELECTION ERROR >>>>>" GOTO 1330 
BRS * STR$(300*2~ (BAUD - 1)) 

GOSUB 2250 

PRINT" = = = = = = = = = = SERIAL EPROM PROGRAMMER = = = = = = = = = = 
PRINT" EPROM-TYPE SELECTION" 

PRINT'The SERIAL EPROM programmer has the ability to program several" 

PRINT"different EPROMS Select the type of EPROM from the list below " 

PRINT" (1) 2716- 

PRINT" (2) 2732/2732A" 

PRINT" (3) 2764- 

PRINT" (4) 27128" 

PRINT'Enter the number of your selection — > ";:ESIZE$ = INPUT$(1) 

PRINT ESIZES ESIZE = VAL(ESIZE$):IF ESIZE>0 AND ESIZE<5 THEN 1520 
PRINT "<<<<< EPROM-TYPE ERROR > > > > > " GOTO 1490 
DSIZE = 1024 *2“ ESIZE.PAGES = DSIZE/256 
EP1$ = STR$(16*2~ (ESIZE - 1)) 

EPS = "27" + RIGHT$(EP1 $,LEN(EP1 $) - 1) 

DIM ARRAY(DSIZE) 

GOSUB 2250:GOSUB 4790:GOSUB 2250 

PRINT = = = = = = = = = = SERIAL EPROM PROGRAMMER = = = = = = = = = = 
PRINT " CONDITION OF EPROM" 

PRINT"If the EPROM you are programming is fully erased then select" 

PRINT"‘EPROM ERASED’ from the selection list below. This will save" 

PRINT'The time required to read the EPROM into memory. If the EPROM" 

PRINT'has been partially programmed then select ‘PARTIALLY PROGRAMMED'" 
PRINT'and the EPROM will be read into memory prior to programming." 

PRINT" (1) EPROM ERASED" 

PRINT" (2) EPROM PARTIALLY PROGRAMMED" 

PRINT'Enter the number of your selection —> ";:ERA$ = INPUT$(1) 

PRINT ERA$:PRINT:ERA = VAL(ERA$):IF ERA = 2 THEN 1740 

IF ERAo 1 THEN PRINT"<<<<< SELECTION ERROR > > > > >":GOTO 1690 
PRINT' < < < < < INITIALIZING MEMORY — PLEASE WAIT >>>>>" 

FOR 1 = 0 TO DSIZE - 1 :ARRAY(I) = 255:NEXT I 
ON BAUD GOTO 1750,1760,1770,1780,1790,1800 
OPEN "COM1:300,n,8,1 .rs.cs.ds" AS #3:GOTO 1810 
OPEN “COM 1:600,n,8,1,rs.cs.ds" AS #3:GOTO 1810 
OPEN "COM1:1200,n,8,1,rs.cs.ds" AS #3:GOTO 1810 
OPEN "COM1:2400,n,8,1,rs.cs.ds" AS #3:GOTO 1810 
OPEN “COM1 4800,n,8,1,rs.cs.ds" AS #3:GOTO 1810 
OPEN “COM1:9600,n,8,1,rs.cs.ds" AS #3 
GOSUB 2250 

PRINT = = = = = = = = = = SERIAL EPROM PROGRAMMER = = = = = = = = = = 
PRINT " BASE-PAGE INITIALIZATION" 

PRINT'The SERIAL EPROM programmer is driven by a keystroke-oriented" 

PRINT"program. The keys are defined in a HELP menu. This help menu" 

PRINT"can be displayed at any time by typing the letter (H) after" 

PRINT'The program has been initialized." 

PRINTPRINT 

PRINT'To initialize the program you must enter the base page" 

PRINT' address of the EPROM This address is generally a HEXADECIMAL value" 
PRINT'corresponding to the beginning page of an even 2K-byte boundary." 


114 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 




1930 PRINT'For example 00,08,B0,B8,etc.” 

1950 GOSUB 3770:REM SET BASE ADDRESS 

1960 IF HFLAG = 1 THEN HFLAG = 0:GOTO 1950 
1970 IF ERA- 1 THEN 2000 

1980 PRINT“A MEMORY IMAGE OF YOUR EPROM IS BEING MADE" 

1990 GOSUB 3890:REM MAKE MEMORY IMAGE 

2000 GOSUB 2880:REM DISPLAY HELP MENU 

2010 PRINT:PRINT 

2020 PRINT"YOUR PRESENT LOCATION IS:" 

2030 GOSUB 2320:REM READ AND DISPLAY DATA 

2040 PRINT-COMMAND 
2050 IKEYS-INPUTS(I) 

2060 IF IKEY$> = “a" AND IKEYS< = "z" THEN IKEY$ = CHR$(ASC(IKEY$) AND 95) 

2070 K = INSTR(K$,IKEY$):IF K = 0 THEN PRINT "WHAT ?";:GOTO 2050 
2080 HFLAG = 0 

2090 ON K GOSUB 3430,2380,2440,2160,2500,2660,2880,3550,3760,3980,4240,4400 
2100 REM VPNEOWHDIBSL 

2110 IF HFLAG = 1 THEN GOSUB 2880 
2120 IF HFLAG = 1 OR IKEY$ = "H" THEN 2010 ELSE 2030 

2140 REM BURN EPROM AND END OPTION 
2160 GOSUB 3980 

2170 IF IKEY$< > “N" THEN RETURN 
2180 CLOSE.END 

2200 REM MAIN BODY ENDS HERE - SUBROUTINE MODULES FOLLOW 
2230 REM DISPLAY STATUS LINE 

2250 CLS:LOCATE 25,1:PRINT USING LINE25$;BR$,EP$,BP$; 

2260 PRINT "COMMANDS: ";K$ 

2270 LOCATE 3,1,1:RETURN 

2300 REM DISPLAY LOCATION AND DATA 

2320 RDATA = ARRAY(PAGE*256 +BYTE) AND 255:REM GET DATUM FROM ARRAY 

2330 PRINT USING FORMAT$;HEX$(BIAS + PAGE),HEX$(BYTE),HEX$(RDATA) 

2340 RETURN 

2360 REM DECREMENT ADDRESS 

2380 IF PAGE-0 AND BYTE-0 THEN RETURN ELSE BYTE-BYTE-1 
2390 IF BYTE - -1 THEN PAGE = PAGE -1 :BYTE = 255 
2400 RETURN 

2420 REM INCREMENT ADDRESS 

2440 IF PAGE-PAGES-1 AND BYTE-255 THEN RETURN ELSE BYTE-BYTE+ 1 
2450 IF BYTE = 256 THEN PAGE = PAGE + 1 :BYTE = 0 
2460 RETURN 

2480 REM OFFSET TO NEW STARTING ADDRESS 

2500 ADDS-" ":PRINT:PRINT"ENTER NEW LOCATION IN HEXADECIMAL (hhhh) -> "; 

2510 L$-INPUT$(1):PRINT L$: 

2520 IF L$> = "a" AND L$< ="z" THEN L$ = CHR$(ASC(L$) AND 95) 

2530 IF L$ = "H" THEN HFLAG = 1 :RETURN 
2540 IF LS- "Q" THEN PRINT.RETURN 

2550 ADDS-ADDS+ L$:IF LEN(ADD$) = 4 THEN PRINT ELSE 2510 
2560 PAGES = LEFT$(ADD$,2): BYTES = RIGHT$(ADD$,2) 

2570 CONS = PAGE$:GOSUB 3110:IF SUM - -1 THEN 2500 
2580 PAGE-SUM-BIAS 

2590 IF PAGE > PAGES-1 OR PAGE <0 THEN PRINT"<<<<< OUT OF RANGE > > > > >":GOTO 2500 
2600 CONS = BYTE$:GOSUB 3110:IF SUM - -1 THEN 2500 
2610 BYTE-SUM 
2620 RETURN 

2640 REM WRITE TO ARRAY - BYTE BY BYTE 

2660 XFLAG = 0:DATUM$ = " ":PRINT‘'<<< WRITE MODE >>> ENTER DATA IN HEXADECIMAL (hh) -> 

2670 D$= INPUT$(1):PRINT D$; 

2680 IF D$> = "a" AND D$< ="z" THEN D$ = CHR$(ASC(D$) AND 95) 

2690 IF D$ = "H" THEN HFLAG = 1 :RETURN 

2700 IF D$ = "Q" THEN PRINT:RETURN 

2710 IF D$ = "X" THEN XFLAG = 1 :DATUM$ = " ":GOTO 2670 

2720 DATUMS-DATUMS+ D$:IF LEN(DATUM$)< >2 THEN 2670 

2730 PRINT:CON$ = DATUM$:GOSUB 3110:DATUM = SUM 

2740 IF SUM - -1 THEN 2660 

2750 IF (ARRAY(PAGE*256 + BYTE) AND 255)< >255 AND XFLAG-0 THEN 2830 

2760 DATUM-DATUM OR 256:REM TAG LOCATION AS WRITTEN TO 

2770 ARRAY(PAGE*256 + BYTE) = DATUM:REM WRITE DATUM TO ARRAY 

2780 GOSUB 2320:REM DISPLAY WRITE TO ARRAY 

2790 IF BYTE = 255 AND PAGE-PAGES-1 THEN RETURN 

2800 GOSUB 2440:REM INCREMENT ADDRESS 

2810 GOSUB 2320:REM DISPLAY NEXT LOCATION 

2820 GOTO 2660 

( continued ) 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 115 






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3010 

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3130 

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3160 

3170 

3180 

3190 

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3250 

3260 

3270 

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3290 

3300 

3310 

3320 

3340 

3350 

3360 

3370 

3380 

3390 

3400 

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3430 

3440 

3450 

3460 

3470 

3480 

3490 

3500 

3510 

3520 

3530 

3550 

3560 

3570 

3580 

3590 

3600 

3610 

3620 

3630 

3640 

3650 

3660 

3670 

3680 

3690 


PRINT:PRINT“< < < < << ILLEGAL WRITE TO PREVIOUSLY PROGRAMMED LOCATION >>>>>> 
RETURN 

REM HELP ROUTINE 

GOSUB 2250:REM CLEAR SCREEN 

PRINT'To initialize the program you should enter the beginning page ' 

PRINT“address of the EPROM to be programmed This value is used when' 

PRINT“printing to the screen and as a bias value in the write modes.” 

PRINT'‘The following single-letter commands are used to control the” 

PRINT'modes of the EPROM programmer:”:PRINT 


(I) INITIALIZE BASE-PAGE ADDRESS - base address is 

(V) VERIFY ERASURE” 

(N) DISPLAY NEXT BYTE” 

(P) DISPLAY PREVIOUS BYTE” 

(O) OFFSET TO NEW PAGE AND BYTE” 

(L) LOAD ARRAY FROM DISK” 

(S) SAVE ARRAY ON DISK” 

(W) ENTER BYTE WRITE MODE 

(D) HEXADECIMAL DUMP TO SCREEN” 

(B) ENTER BURN EPROM' MODE” 

(H) ENTER HELP MODE 

(E) EXIT PROGRAM” 


(use Q or H to exit. X to edit)” 


(from any input statement)” 


1) 


PRINT” (I) INITIALIZE BASE-PAGE ADDRESS - base address is ”;BIAS$:"00” 

PRINT” 

PRINT” 

PRINT” 

PRINT” 

PRINT” 

PRINT” 

PRINT” 

PRINT- 
PRINT” 

PRINT- 
PRINT” 

RETURN 

REM ***** CONVERT HEXADECIMAL TO DECIMAL ***** 

REM ENTER WITH HEXADECIMAL STRING IN CONS, EXIT WITH DECIMAL VALUE IN SUM 
SUM = 0 

FOR I = 1 TO LEN(CONS) 

X * ASC(MID$(CON$,(LEN(CON$) + 1 -1),1)) 

IF X<48 OR X>70 THEN SUM = - 1 :l * LEN(CON$):GOTO 3190 
IF X>57 AND X<65 THEN SUM = -1:1 = LEN(CON$):GOTO 3190 
IF X<64 THEN X-X-48 ELSE X = X-55 
SU M = SUM + (X * 16 “ (I -1)) 

IF SUM>255 OR SUM<0 THEN SUM = -1 
IF SUM = -1 THEN PRINT”<<<<< INPUT ERROR >>>>> 

NEXT l:RETURN 

REM WRITE A BYTE 
WPAGE = PAGE OR 128:REM 
PRINT #3,CHR$(WPAGE);:REM 
PRINT #3,CHR$(BYTE);:REM 
PRINT #3,CHR$(DATUM); REM 
PRINT #3,CHR$(STROBE), REM 
FOR DEL = 1 TO DELAY NEXT DELREM 
RETURN 

REM = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = 

REM READ A BYTE 
PRINT #3,CHR$(PAGE);:REM 
PRINT #3,CHR$(BYTE);:REM 
PRINT #3,CHR$(DUMMY); REM 
PRINT #3,CHR$(STROBE);:REM 
RDATA = ASC(INPUT$(1 ,#3)):REM 
RETURN 

REM VERIFY ERASURE 

PRINT:PRINT”VERIFYING THAT EPROM IS ERASED " PRINT 
BYTE = 0: PAGE = 0 

FOR PAGE = 0 TO PAGES-1 V$ = ” OK” 

FOR BYTE = 0 TO 255 

IF (ARRAY(PAGE*256 +BYTE) AND 255) = 255 THEN 3490 
VS = ”<<<<<< NOT ERASED >>>>>> 

NEXT BYTE:PRINT”PAGE”;PAGE;V$ 

NEXT PAGE 

BYTE = 0PAGE = 0:RETURN 

REM DUMP TO SCREEN 
GOSUB 2250 
FOR LN = 1 TO 16 

DPAGES- RIGHTSf'O” + HEXADECIMAL$(BIAS + PAGE),2) 

DBYTE$ = RIGHTSC'O” + HEXADECIMAL$(BYTE),2) 

PRINT USING'\\”;DPAGE$:DBYTE$;“ 

FOR D= 1 TO 16 

DDATAS = RIGHTSC'O + HEXADECIMAL$((ARRAY(PAGE *256 h 
PRINT USING\\”;DDATA$; 

IF PAGE = PAGES-1 AND BYTE = 255 THEN D=16:LN = 16 
GOSUB 2440 IF BYTE MOD 16 = 0 THEN PRINT:D=16 
NEXT D 

NEXT LN:PRINT:PRINT 

IF PAGE = PAGES-1 AND BYTE = 255 THEN PRINT”<< < < < < END OF EPROM >>>>> RETURN 
PRINT'ENTER (C) TO CONTINUE OR (Q) TO EXIT DUMP -> ;:IKEY$ = INPUT$(1) 

IF IKEY$> = "a” AND IKEY$< =”z” THEN IKEY$ = CHR$(ASC(IKEY$) AND 95) 


SET WRITE PAGE (W/R = 
SEND WRITE PAGE 
SET WRITE BYTE 
DATA TO WRITE 
WRITE STROBE 
WRITE DELAY 


SET READ PAGE (W/R = 0) 
SET READ BYTE 
DUMMY DATA SENT 
READ STROBE 
INPUT DATA 


h BYTE) AND 255)).2) 


116 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 











3700 PRINT IKEYS:PRINT:IF IKEY$="C” THEN 3560 
3710 IF IKEY$ = ”H” THEN HFLAG = 1 :RETURN 
3720 IF IKEY$ = "Q" THEN RETURN ELSE 3680 

3730 REM = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = 
3740 REM SET BIAS ADDRESS 
3760 GOSUB 2250 

3770 BIAS$ = " PRINT:PRINT"ENTER BASE-PAGE ADDRESS IN HEXADECIMAL (hh) -> ’ : 

3780 B$ = INPUT$(1):PRINT B$; 

3790 IF B$> = "a" AND B$< = "z" THEN BS = CHR$(ASC(B$) AND 95) 

3800 IF B$ = "H” THEN HFLAG = 1 RETURN 

3810 IF B$="Q" THEN PRINT:RETURN 

3820 BIASS = BIASS+ BSIF LEN(BIAS$)< >2 THEN 3780 

3830 PRINT 

3840 CONS = BIAS$:GOSUB 3110:BIAS = SUM:PRINT:PRINT:IF SUM= -1 THEN 3770 
3850 PAGE = 0:BYTE = O BPS = BIASS + ‘‘00":GOSUB 2250:RETURN 

3860 REM = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = 
3870 REM READ EPROM TO ARRAY 
3890 PAGE = 0:BYTE = 0:GOSUB 2250 
3900 GOSUB 3340 

3910 ARRAY(PAGE*256 + BYTE) = RDATA:IF BYTE-0 THEN PRINT-READING PAGE";PAGE 
3920 BYTE = BYTE+1:IF BYTE = 256 THEN PAGE = PAGE + 1 :BYTE = 0 
3930 IF PAGE<= PAGES-1 THEN 3900 
3940 PRINT:PAGE = 0:BYTE = 0:RETURN 

3960 REM WRITE ARRAY TO EPROM 
3980 GOSUB 2250 

3990 PRINT‘‘< < < < < < BURN ALL PROGRAMMED BYTES ??>>>>> >” 

4010 PRINT‘‘TYPE (Y) TO PROGRAM EPROM” 

4020 PRINT-(Q) TO RETURN TO PROGRAM" 

4030 PRINT-(H) TO DISPLAY HELP MENU” 

4040 PRINT‘‘(N) TO RETURN TO PROGRAM FROM BURN' MODE" 

4050 PRINT-TO ABORT PROGRAM IN ‘EXIT’ MODE." 

4060 PRINT:PRINT"ENTER SELECTION-> ";:IKEY$ = INPUT$(1) 

4070 PRINT IKEYS 

4080 IF IKEY$> = "a" AND IKEY$< = "z” THEN IKEYS = CHR$(ASC(IKEY$) AND 95) 

4090 IF IKEYS = "N" THEN RETURN 

4100 IF IKEYS = "H" THEN HFLAG = 1 :RETURN 

4110 IF IKEYS = "Q" THEN PRINT:RETURN 

4120 IF IKEY$< >"Y” THEN 3990 

4130 FOR ADD = 0 TO DSIZE 

4140 DATUM = ARRAY(ADD):IF DATUM <256 THEN 4190 

4150 DATUM = DATUM AND 255:BYTE = ADD MOD 256:PAGE = (ADD-BYTE)/256 
4160 PRINT "BURNING ";:GOSUB 2320 
4170 GOSUB 3240:GOSUB 3340 

4180 IF RDATA< >DATUM THEN PRINT "<<<<<< DATA NOT VERIFIED >>>>>>" 

4190 NEXT ADD 

4200 PRINT:BYTE = 0:PAGE = 0:RETURN 

4210 REM = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = 
4220 REM SAVE ARRAY IN DISK FILE 

4240 GOSUB 2250:PRINT"THE DISK FILE CREATED HERE WILL CONTAIN ALL THE DATA" 
4250 PRINT"PRESENTLY CONTAINED IN YOUR EPROM MEMORY IMAGE AND" 

4260 PRINT-WILL BE ASSIGNED THE FILE EXTENSION 'PRM'." 

4270 PRINT"THE FOLLOWING IS A LIST OF EXISTING DISK FILES WITH" 

4280 PRINT'THE FILE EXTENSION '.PRM’.":PRINT:PRINT 
4290 FILES "*.PRM":PRINT:PRINT 

4300 INPUT"ENTER THE FILENAME OF YOUR NEW DISK FILE -> ".FILENAMES 
4310 IF FILENAME$="H" OR FILENAMES = "h” THEN HFLAG * 1 :RETURN 
4320 IF FILENAMES = "Q" OR FILENAMES = "q" THEN RETURN 
4330 OPEN "O’',#1 .FILENAMES-*- ".PRM" 

4340 FOR 1 = 0 TO DSIZE - 1 PRINT #1,(ARRAY(I) AND 255); 

4350 IF I MOD 256 = 0 THEN PRINT "SAVING PAGE";l/256 
4360 NEXT LCLOSE #1 :RETURN 

4380 REM LOAD ARRAY FROM DISK 

4400 GOSUB 2250:PRINT:PRINT'THE FOLLOWING IS A LIST OF FILENAMES WITH THE FILE- 
4410 PRINT-EXTENSION .PRM"’:PRINT:PRINT 
4420 FILES " VPRM":PRINT:PRINT 

4430 INPUT"ENTER A FILENAME FROM THE LIST ABOVE — >', FILENAMES 
4440 IF FILENAME$ = "H" OR FILENAME$ = "h” THEN HFLAG = 1 :RETURN 
4450 IF FILENAME$= "Q" OR FILENAME$ = "q" THEN RETURN 
4460 OPEN 'T’.#1 .FILENAMES + " PRM" 

4470 FOR 1 = 0 TO DSIZE - 1 :INPUT #1,DATUM 

4480 IF I MOD 256 = 0 THEN PRINT "LOADING PAGE”;l/256 

4490 IF DATUM = 255 OR DATUM = (ARRAY(I) AND 255) THEN 4560 

4500 IF ARRAY(I)< >255 THEN 4520 

4510 ARRAY(I) = DATUM OR 256:GOTO 4560 

4520 PRINT" < < < < < < ILLEGAL INPUT DATA FROM FILE >>>>>>" 

4530 PRINT" < < < < < < ATTEMPT TO WRITE OVER PROGRAMMED LOCATION >>>>>> 
4540 PRINT"< < < < < < PROGRAM HAS BEEN ABORTED >>>>>>" 


( continued ) 


FEBRUARY 1985 ‘BYTE 117 











4550 CLOSE#1 END 

4560 NEXT I CLOSE #1 RETURN 

4580 REM DISK-ERROR ROUTINE 

4600 IF ERR = 53 AND ERL = 4290 THEN PRINT 'NO PRM FILES RESUME 4300 

4610 IF ERR = 53 AND ERL = 4420 THEN PRINT' NO PRM FILES GOTO 4670 

4620 IF ERR = 53 AND ERL = 4460 THEN PRINT"UNKNOWN FILE ’ GOTO 4670 

4630 IF ERR = 61 THEN PRINT "DISK FULL":GOTO 4670 

4640 IF ERR = 57 THEN PRINT'RESET EPROM PROGRAMMER " GOTO 4670 

4650 IF ERR = 67 THEN PRINT"UNKNOWN FILENAME, DON’T TYPE PRM GOTO 4670 

4660 CLOSE#1 PRINT "UNKNOWN ERROR # ”;ERR; "IN LINE #";ERL 

4670 PRINT "PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE-> ; IKEY$ = INPUT$(1):PRINT 

4680 IF ERR = 57 THEN RESUME 0 

4690 HFLAG = 1 

4700 RESUME 2110 

4710 ON ERROR GOTO 0 

4730 REM CONFIGURATION ROUTINE 

4750 DATA 255,255,196,255,196.255,196,255,255,196,255,196 

4760 DATA 026,196,255,255,255,196,255,196,196,255,255,196 

4770 DATA 196,255,196,196,255,255,196,255,196,255,255,255 

4780 DATA 196,255,196,196,255,255,196,255,196,255,196,255 

4790 IF ESIZE = 1 THEN RESTORE 4750 

4800 IF ESIZE = 2 THEN RESTORE 4760 

4810 IF ESIZE = 3 THEN RESTORE 4770 

4820 IF ESIZE = 4 THEN RESTORE 4780 

4830 LOCATE 1.22 PRINT '"JUMPER CONFIGURATION" 

4840 LOCATE 3.30 PRINT CHR$(201);CHR$(205);CHR$(205);CHR$(187) 

4850 FOR 1 = 4 TO 15 

4860 LOCATE 1,30 PRINT CHR$(199);‘" ";CHR$(182);"J";I - 3 
4870 NEXT I 

4880 LOCATE 16,30:PRINT CHR$(200);CHR$(205);CHR$(205);CHR$(188) 

4890 FOR I = 4 TO 15 
4900 READ JUMPER 

4910 LOCATE 1,31 PRINT CHR$(JUMPER);CHR$(JUMPER) 

4920 NEXT I 
4930 LOCATE 4.38 

4940 IF ESIZE = 2 THEN PRINT"NOTE: INSTALL J1 FOR 2732A EPROMs 
4950 LOCATE 18,20:PRINT "If jumpers are not properly configured" 

4960 LOCATE 19,20:PRINT "shut off programmer and set jumpers, 

4970 LOCATE 20,20:PRINT "then turn programmer back on." 

4980 LOCATE 22,20:PRINT "Press any key to continue — > 

4990 AS = INPUT$(1):RETURN 


created with a SAVE command in the 
program can also be used to enter the 
data. 

A help routine is provided in the 
program to assist the user during the 
operation of the programmer. It con¬ 
sists of a menu that contains all the 
choices available in the driver pro¬ 
gram. The routine can be entered 
from any location in the program by 
typing the letter H. A screen-dump 
routine and an EPROM erasure-veri¬ 
fication routine are also provided. 

In Conclusion 

The serial-port EPROM programmer 
isn't designed for volume program¬ 
ming. It's intended to be a cost- 


effective, transportable programmer 
that doesn't become outmoded with 
each new computer and system bus. 
You'll also find, cleverly embedded in 
every programming cycle, enough 
time for you to take a well-deserved 
coffee break. 

Circuit Cellar Feedback 

This month's feedback begins on 
page 393. 

Next Month 

I've always been intrigued by home 
control and electronic messaging. In 
March. I'll tackle the subject in 
earnest, beginning with a Touch-Tone 
Interactive Message System. ■ 


Special thanks to Larry Bregoli for his software 
expertise. 

Editor s Note: Steve often refers to previous 
Circuit Cellar articles. Most of these past ar¬ 
ticles are available in reprint books from 
BYTE Books. McGraw-Hill Book Company. 
POB 400. Hightstown. NJ 08250. 

Garcia's Circuit Cellar. Volume I covers articles 
that appeared in BYTE from September 1977 
through November 1978. Volume II covers 
December 1978 through June 1980. Volume 
HI covers July 1980 through December 1981. 
Volume IV covers January 1982 through June 
1983. 


To receive a complete list of Ciarcia's Cir¬ 
cuit Cellar project kits, circle 100 on the 
reader-service inquiry card at the back of 
the magazine. 


118 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 









Your Gateway to Artificial Intelligence 


Golden 

Common 

IiSP 


IBM 

Personal 

Computer 


Gold Hill Computers brings the language of 
Artificial Intelligence to "four Personal Computer. 


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the hardware and the scarcity of Lisp 
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you to learn and use Lisp on your per 
sonal computer. You will know the ex 
citement of expert systems, intelligent 
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Common Lisp is the new Lisp stan¬ 
dard developed by researchers from 
universities and corporations such as 
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Digital, LMI, Symbolics, and Texas 
Instruments. Golden Common Lisp is 
the right Lisp for you because it is 
baseaon Common Lisp. Programs you 
develop using Golden Common Lisp 
on your personal computer will run 
in tne Common Lisp environments of 
larger, more expensive machines. 

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programmer becomes a Lisp pro¬ 
grammer. Golden Common Lisp comes 
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both novices and experienced pro¬ 
grammers. The new second edition of 
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and Horn is also included. 

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plete with the intelligent GMACS 


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comes with everything you need to 
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package includes: 

• an intelligent GMACS editor 

• program development tools 

• the San Marco Lisp Explorer 

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• the Golden Common Lisp Users’ 
Guide and Reference Manual 


ORDER GCLisp TODAY using 
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163 Harvard Street 
Cambridge, MA 02139 


B10-84 


1 


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Organization 


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Phone 


// 


Today’s Date 


Type of computer 

□ Enclosed is a check to Gold Hill 
Computers for GCLisp. 

□ Please bill my □ MasterCard □ VISA card. 

_ / / 

Card # Expiration Date 


Signature 

Quantity Description 


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Golden Common Lisp is a registered trademark of Gold Hill Computers. GCLisp is a trademark of Gold Hill Computers. The Lisp Explorer is a trademark of San 
Marco Associates. Lisp is copyrighted by Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc. The Common Lisp Reference Manual is copyrighted by Digital Equipment 
Corporation. Rainbow is a trademark of Digital Equipment Corporation. IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines. 


Inquiry 123 












































120 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 




























PREVIEW 

THE 

MACINTOSH 

OFFICE 

by John Markoff and Phillip Robinson 


Editor's note: The following is a BYTE prod¬ 
uct preview. It is not a review. We provide this 
advance look at this new product because we 
feel it is significant. 

ON THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY of the 
introduction of the Macintosh, Apple 
Computer has introduced AppleTalk, 
which is a new local-area network 
(LAN), and a series of intelligent net¬ 
worked peripherals, including a laser 
printer and file server. The company 
hopes these products will make the 
"Macintosh office” a popular choice 
for work groups in large and small 
corporations. 

AppleTalk and the laser printer are 
scheduled to be shipped in March. 

The network was developed to 
serve as a small-work-group intercon¬ 
nect system, as a tributary to larger 
high-speed local-area and long-haul 
networks, and. in its most basic form, 
as a peripheral bus between an Apple 
computer and dedicated peripheral 
devices. 

The new Apple LAN concept is a 
radical departure from common in¬ 
dustry thinking about LAN design (for 

( continued) 

John Markoff and Phillip Robinson (1000 
Elwell CL Palo Alto. CA 94393) are BYTE 
senior technical editors. 


ILLUSTRATED BY JOAN HALL 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 121 























THE MAC OFFICE 


AppleTalk networks 
the Macintosh and 
a new laser printer. 

more information on Apple's plans for 
the future see the text box “Steve 
Drops By" on page 124). Instead of 
providing a high-bandwidth channel 
to link personal computers to each 
other and to larger remote computers. 
Apple designed its LAN to be a low- 
speed. low-cost network for small 
work groups. 

The AppleTalk architecture relies on 
the distribution of “intelligence'' in 
network peripherals and on the clever 
use of the network's limited speed. 
Apple is betting that the principal bar¬ 
rier to networking office microcom¬ 
puters has until now been cost. By 
focusing on an LAN that is optimized 
to share resources among small 
groups, the company hopes to 
achieve a better match to the organi¬ 
zation of the typical office. 

Since the introduction of the Macin¬ 
tosh. Apple has changed the name of 
its LAN from AppleBus to AppleTalk. 
When Apple first described the LAN. 
the company emphasized the net¬ 
work's role in providing the Macintosh 
with “virtual'' serial slots for periph¬ 
erals as an alternative to the open 
hardware architecture of the Apple II. 
As it is released, AppleTalk goes 
beyond this. However you may still be 
able to daisy-chain peripherals by 
adding a smart network controller. 
But for now, Apple has decided to 
leave this option to third parties. One 
manufacturer. Tfecmar Inc. has already 
demonstrated the ability of its 68000- 
based hard-disk system to control 
both an ImageWriter and an Apple 
modem. 

Apple is moving toward putting 
microprocessors in all or most of its 
peripherals. This design philosophy, 
plus the standardization on the Zilog 
SCC (serial-communications con¬ 
troller) chip that is now used in the 
Lisa, Macintosh, and Apple lie com¬ 
puters, will make the task of network¬ 


ing peripherals simpler. 

At the time of AppleTalk's introduc¬ 
tion, Apple is only demonstrating the 
LAN with a prototype 20-megabyte in¬ 
telligent file-server hard-disk system, 
which you will need for network ap¬ 
plications such as electronic mail and 
print spooling. However, we were told 
that the hard disk will be announced 
in August 1985 and it will cost $3500. 
An electronic-mail communications 
package for AppleTalk is also 
scheduled to be announced at the 
same time. 

The company is also discussing a 
variety of future network products 
such as a bridge to link individual 
AppleTalk networks, an interface to 
the recently announced IBM PC LAN. 
communication servers, network data¬ 
bases. and as many as 50 third-party 
hardware and software development 
projects based on AppleTalk. Details 
of these products aren't yet available; 
therefore, it is difficult to assess 
AppleTalk at present. But after several 
false starts at developing a LAN. 
Apple is moving toward making it 
possible to link its products in office 
and other workplace settings. 

AppleTalk 

The heart of AppleTalk is the Macin¬ 
tosh serial-communications chip, a 
two-channel Zilog 8530 SCC that pro¬ 
vides synchronous and asynchronous 
data communications at up to 2 30.4K 
bits per second (bps) using a self¬ 
clocking data format. (The 8530 will 
provide data communications at 
speeds as high as 1 megabit per sec¬ 
ond. using an external clock. Corvus 
Systems Inc. has also used this higher- 
speed scheme in its Macintosh imple¬ 
mentation of the Omninet LAN.) 

At the physical level. AppleTalk con¬ 
sists of a shielded twisted-pair trunk 
cable with modules that are passive¬ 
ly connected to computer and periph¬ 
eral nodes via a short drop cable. An 
individual AppleTalk network can 
have up to 32 nodes and has a packet¬ 
switching protocol and a data rate of 
230.4K bps using FM 0 modulation (a 
bit-encoding technique that provides 
self-clocking) over a maximum 
distance of 300 meters. 


Externally, AppleTalk is simple, con¬ 
sisting of the connection modules, 
each of which has two miniature DIN 
three-pin connectors, and a DB-9 port 
that connects to the printer port on 
the Macintosh via a 2-meter cable. In¬ 
side each connection module are 
resistors, a capacitor, and a small 
transformer, designed so that the link 
is transformer-isolated and not 
susceptible to any kind of radio¬ 
frequency interference (RFI) or static 
discharge. 

Apple calls the connector modules 
self-terminating, which keeps you 
from worrying about line termination 
and. in combination with the trans¬ 
former, lets you add nodes to the net¬ 
work and remove them without dis¬ 
rupting network functions. A 100-ohm 
terminating resistor is included in 
each connector box. and there are 
two switch connections that are 
opened when the miniature DIN con¬ 
nectors are inserted. If both connec¬ 
tors are used, the switches are open, 
but if one of the connectors is not 
used, the terminating resistor is con¬ 
nected across the line. 

AppleTalk uses a dynamic-address¬ 
ing scheme that ensures that each 
node on the network has a unique 
8-bit address (there is also a 
mechanism for internet communica¬ 
tions across bridges and through 
gateways). The AppleTalk destination 
address is used to “filter” frames at 
the data-link layer. Frames are not ac¬ 
cepted unless their destination ad¬ 
dress matches the address of the 
receiving node. The SCC chip 
facilitates this process by performing 
the address-recognition function in 
hardware. 

AppleTalk doesn’t require that a 
particular node's address be per¬ 
manently recorded or set with 
jumpers. The advantage of this is that 
you can move computers and periph¬ 
erals between networks and install 
them by simply attaching them to the 
network. For example, Apple claims 
you can bring your Macintosh to the 
network, plug it in, insert a disk, and 
turn it on. No special network con¬ 
figuration is necessary. Setting of the 
node address takes place when the 


122 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 








THE MAC OFFICE 


computer first looks at some non¬ 
volatile memory to find a previous ad¬ 
dress it has saved, or when it com¬ 
putes a new address based on the 


generation of a pseudorandom num¬ 
ber. The computer then tests the ad¬ 
dress to see if it already exists on the 
network by sending a special packet 


to the address. If the address is 
already in use. the node there will 
answer and a new guess must be gen- 

( continued ) 


Steve Drops By 


W e met Burrell Smith and Bud 
TVibble and the rest of the 
Macintosh office design crew in the 
Macintosh headquarters, one of the 
many Apple buildings in Cupertino, 
California. After moving beyond the 
lobby, we heard someone play a pret¬ 
ty piece of music on a grand piano in 
the center of a large open area that 
also had sofas and a Ping-Pong table. 
On the left was the Matisse room; we 
used the Picasso room on the right. 
During the introduction, someone 
mentioned that Steve would drop by 
later. When Steve Jobs did drop by. he 
had some interesting things to say 
about Apple's plans and strategy. 

"We hope to be able to offer people 
two things based on the Macintosh 
technology. The first, using the graphics 
and the power of that box. is radical 
ease of use. That was the first benefit 
of the Macintosh and that's the one 
we've really been trumpeting this last 
year. 

"We are just now beginning to dem¬ 
onstrate the second great benefit of 
that graphic user interface—capabilities 
that you can’t do on any other com¬ 
puter. You can't do the kind of project 
management you can do on Mac. you 
can't do stuff you can do with Mac- 
Draw, you can't print out entire forms 
or create forms on other computers. It 
will take something like the LaserWriter 
to really drive that home. As we roll out 
the next pieces that complement the 
workstation. I think it's going to 
become very clear to people why the 
graphic user interface is so important. 

"Ultimately, we think that these prod¬ 
ucts are going to be used to help peo¬ 
ple communicate with each other. Not 
analysis, not computationally intensive 
things for their own sake, but things to 
help people communicate much as the 
telephone did. And in terms of com¬ 
munication, look at middle-manager 
productivity in particular. Yes. we col¬ 
lect information, we analyze it, but then 
we draw conclusions from it and we 
need to communicate those conclu¬ 
sions to people around us. 


"We communicate in two ways. One. 
with paper, and the paperless office, 
which generates more paper than the 
traditional office; we've all found that 
out because we give people tools that 
generate the paper. So we've got to im¬ 
prove the quality of visual communica¬ 
tion, improve the ability to communi¬ 
cate via paper. That includes overhead 
transparencies, which I think are going 
to be a big use for the printer. We can 
do that through the software tools on 
the Mac and through the ability to print 
them. 

"The next way that we can radically 
improve communication is to elec¬ 
tronically link up people. We can start 
to do things like mail, electronic 
scheduling, and a variety of things that 
will improve how we communicate with 
each other. The result of improving 
those two ways of communication. I 
think, is going to be startling, when 
coupled with the fact that you can 
learn how to use the system in a half 
hour. 

"I also think we’re holding true to our 
vision oi trying to remove the service 
and support requirements from the 
equation of success so that we don't 
have to send out a person at a thou¬ 
sand dollars per half day to help you 
install your computer system. 

"AppleTalk plugs together and you 
don’t have a chance to forget to hook 
up the terminator plugs because there 
aren't any. and you don't have to set 
the thumb-wheel switches because 
there aren't any, and you don't have to 
run the network master-configuration 
program because there isn't any. You 
just plug it together like a telephone 
or stereo and it works. And its very, 
very difficult to do wrong. Those little 
things are what keep you from having 
to go out and hold people's hands, run 
them through half-day training courses, 
and things like that. 

"We think that networking is going to 
start from the bottom up in small work 
groups. If you've got four people on 
the network, which is a typical number 
to start with, it will cost $150 per per¬ 


son for the head end. So you've got to 
have about $1000 to hook up a com¬ 
puter to the net. It may be worth it 
someday when there's a lot of great 
software. But, right now not many are 
going to pay a thousand bucks to hook 
up a $2000 computer to a network. 

"And that's what AppleTalk is all 
about. Nobody's hooking up to nets 
because there isn't enough software 
that makes it worthwhile. There isn't 
enough software that runs in nets 
because if you write software to run in 
a net. there's nobody to sell it to 
because there aren't any nets. So it's 
a circular problem. No nets, no soft¬ 
ware; no software, no nets. We want to 
break through that logjam with Apple- 
Talk costing 50 bucks a computer. 

"We just wish the whole world would 
standardize on a net. We'd all be happy, 
lust give us the jacks in the walls every¬ 
where; we'd have no problem calling 
it the IBM net or the AT&T net, but it's 
not coming together. Ultimately, we 
feel that (the standard] network in the 
office is going to be the digital phone 
switch and not something that Apple 
or IBM comes up with. It turns out that 
the rates at which the digital-phone- 
switch standards are emerging (the 
CCITT |Comite Consultatif International 
Telephonique et Telegraphique] stan¬ 
dards) are very close to AppleTalk 
rates. They're about anywhere from 64 
kilobits per second up to maybe 192 
kilobits per second. 

"So the rates we have chosen will 
probably map well to the ultimate rates 
of what will be the office network. And 
that's how the voice-data integration 
will take place, through a digital CBX. 
not through our network or IBM's net¬ 
work. The decision that we made was 
fundamental: put intelligence in the pe¬ 
ripherals. The really interesting thing 
that's happening isn't the products 
themselves, it's the software standards 
that are being set. As an example, Post¬ 
Script is more important, in a way, than 
the printer (the LaserWriter], "Though 
we think that particular printer is what's 
going to make PostScript a standard." 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 123 






ALL MAM-'Gonroy-UNnta, Inc 12060 SWGardan Pm tatand OR 97223 SSS. TOLL FREE (800) 547-1289 

CASH-n-CARRY COMPUTER STORES, INC. -SAN FRANCISCO. PORTLAND. SEATTLE-SEE BELOW 

HARDWARE for your APPLE SOFTWARE for your APPLE 


COMPUTERS 


MISCELLANEOUS 


BUSINESS & TRAINING 


UTILITY & SYSTEM 


SYSTEMS IN STOCK CALL 

LMmitu WARRANTY '00% Parts & Labor tor 90 dtys fly ls 


DISK DRIVES 


UST 

•CENTRAL FT- Filer. Ubhty & Apple DOS S 20 
•MICRO-SCI. AZ 143K Dish Drive S 345 

A2 Controller Card $100 

l/2Ht Disk Drive (lie) $269 

l/2Ht Dtsh Drive (lie) $299 

TCAP TEAC T40 Direct Drive. 163K $349 

ControNer Card by ComX $110 

1/2 HIGH TEAC. T8Q Double Sided. 326K $ 449 
Tt/tf . Controller Card $ 85 

Rana Elite l. 163K. 40 Track $379 

Elite Z 326K, 80 Track $ 649 

■S f We 3 652K. 160 Track $ 849 

Elite Controller $145 

Video Tech. 1 /2 Ht Disk Drive $ 225 


OUR 
S 15 
$ 199 
$ 79 
$ 195 
$ 209 
S 239 
$ 49 
$ 329 
$ 59 
$ 239 
$ 389 
$ 499 
$ 89 
S 149 


LIST OUR 

•Orange Micro. Grappler Plus (e or ♦) $ 149 $ 99 
16K Butter Board lor Grappler Plus $175 $ 99 
Buffered Grappler Plus. 16K $239 $159 

2 Chip Set for Buttered Grappler $ 28 $ 12 

Paymar, Lower Case Chip. Rev 7 (IK) $ 50 $ 19 

•PCPI.Applicard.64Kw/128K Ext $595 $395 
Applicard 6MHz, 14 features $375 $275 
RH Electronics. Super Fan II $ 75 $ 59 

•Titan /Saturn, Accelerator He $599 $399 

Trackhoute. Numeric Key Pad $ 149 $ 94 
Transend /SSM. AI0II. Serial /Para I /F $ 225 $ 169 
TG. Tracball or Select A Port $ 40 $ 26 

Joystick or Game Paddles $ 45 $ 29 

♦Vide*. PSIO l/F Card _ $229 $ 145 


Macintosh 



RAM EXPANSION 


•ComX 80 col +64K RAM.for He. 1 YrWty $ 199 $ 99 
* RAM Card, 1 YrWty (IK) 16K $179 $ 39 

•Microsoft RAM Card (11+) 16K $100 $ 69 

•Then/Saturn RAM Card 128K (IK) $599 $329 
Other RAM Cards & Software in Stock _ CALL 


VIDEO CARDS 


•ComX. 80co< +64KRAM(lle) lyr wty $199 $ 99 
“* VkJeoTerm 80col Kore) $279 $175 
UHraTerm (♦ or e) $ 379 $ 229 

Soft Video Switch (IK) $ 35 $ 22 

Enhancer II (IK) $149 $ 95 

Function Stnp (IK) $ 39 $ 25 


We Hava Full Videx Line CalL 


Up to 35% oft 


MISCELLANEOUS 


Bluechip, Millionaire 

Central Point, Copy II MAC 
Contoantal Software, Home Accountant 
Oeetovw Solutions. Mac Forth Level I 
Dow Jonas. Straightalk NEW $ 79 

Electronic Arts. Pinball Construction $ 40 

Hayden. Sargon III $ 50 

Human Edge. Sales or Mgmt Edge, ea $ 250 
Info com . Full Line in Stock 
Kensington. Swivel $ 25 

Starter Pak $ 90 

Surge Suppressor $ 50 

Living Vtdeotext Think Tank $ 145 

Main a rast Filer or Writer, ea $ 199 

l Diskettes. SS/SD, 3*4". 10 pak $ 60 

t, Megafker $ 195 

L Chart $ 125 

Word or File or Multiplan, each $195 

- ts. Trivia $ 50 


$ 60 
$ 40 
$100 
$ 149 


•CCS. Send Interface 7711 (Set BAUD) 

$ 150 

$ 

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Monoyam. DoNars 4 $ense 

$150 

*CRS/Eaataida,IMkJ Card 2 (coper e) $ 140 

$ 

99 

Novation. Smartcat Plus Modem w 4oft 

$499 

Chalkboard. Power Pad (Requires Kit) 

$100 

$ 

73 

Penguin. Transylvania 

$ 35 

DWM IlMarch. CP/M Odd Cad |a/68Q 

$496 

$ 389 

Graphics Magician 

$ 50 

• 641 to 19S* Goto Card Expanscn 

$ 325 

$ 239 

NornNhauaPtoktodem 1200w/cabtetaA $495 

Kanaington, System Saver Fan 

$ 90 

$ 

65 

Scarborough/lightning. Mastertype 

$ 35 

Kay Tronic, KB200 Keyboard (II♦) 

$298 

$ 219 

Simon A Schutfer. Typing Tutor III 

$ 50 

Kotda. Touch Tablet w/kkao Illustrator 

$125 

$ 

75 

Softw Pub.. PFS File or PFS Report ea $ 125 

KrMl Joystick (II/IK) 

$ 65 

$ 

49 

PFS File 4 Report 

$195 

Game Paddles (ll/ll-*) 

$ 50 

$ 

39 

Stoneware. DB Master 

$195 

MAR. Sup R fan (IK only) 

$ 50 

I 

30 

Tetoe. File Vision 

$195 

•Mkroaofl Z80 Softcard (♦ or e) 

$345 

$ 235 

T /Maker. Cbckart 

$ 50 

Z80 Softcard Premium (lie) 

$395 

$ 275 

Vklax. Vegas 

$ 60 


39 
30 
65 
95 
50 
29 
33 
$ 159 
CALL 
$ 21 
$ 60 
$ 35 
$ 85 
$ 125 
$ 35 
$ 125 
$ 94 
$ 129 
$ 32 
$ 95 
$ 379 
$ 24 
$ 32 
$ 350 
$ 19 

$ 33 
$ 79 
$ 125 
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$ 32 
$ 34 


•ALS/Silicon VaMey. Word Handler 

* List Handler 

* Handler Pak. (Word. Ust Spell) 

•Applied Soft Tech.. VersaForm 
Arktronics. Jane w /Mouse (IK or lie) 
Jane w/o Mouse (lie) 
Artsd. Magic Wndow II 
Magic Words 

•Ashton Tate. dBase II (Req CP/M 80) 
BP1. Job Cost 

AR.AP.PRorlNV.each 

•Broderbund. Pnnt Shop 

* Bank Street Speller 

* Bank Street Writer (specify 1K. e. c) 

* Bank St Combo (Writer & Speller) 
Continental, GL.AR.AP or PR, each 

* Home Accountant 
CDEXtor Msicate. Mulbpian Apple lle.eacl 
Dow Jones, Market Analyzer 

Market Manager 
Market Microscope IN ST0CI 
Hayden. Pie Writer yers 2 3 

•Howard Soil Tax Preparer. 1984 


A Knoware 
Living Videotex! ThmkTank 
Macs. Managing Your Money 
Micro Pro. (ad require Z80CP/M Card) 

* WbrdStar’* 

* WbrdStar w/Star card 

* WbrdStar Professional. 4 Pak 

* Mai Merge, Sped Star or Star Index, ea 

* InfoStar and StarCard 


Some Common Basic Programs (75 ea) 
Practical Basic Programs (40 ea ) 


Series 40 Gl & AR & AP. aN 3 
•Quark. Word Jugger & Lexicheck Ole) 
Senstbie. Sen Speller or Bookends. ea 
Sierra/On-Line. The Dictionary 
Gen Manager II 
Screenwriter IL 2 Pak w/Dict 
Homeword 

Software Arts. TK'Soiver (for lie or lie) 

Software Publishing, (specify ♦ or e) 
Pf Sfile. PfSGraph. PfSReponeach 
PfS Wrrte (lie) 

PfS Proof 

Stoneware, D6 Master Version 4 0 
DB Ubirty Pak I or II 
VtarCorp. Full Line In Stock 


LIST 

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39 

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39 

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85 

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249 

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195 

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119 

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99 

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48 

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269 

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375 

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34 

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45 

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85 

$250 

165 

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49 

i $ 60 

40 

$350 

219 

$300 

189 

( $ 349 

219 

$ 150 

89 

$250 

185 

t $250 

165 

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64 

$ 150 

99 

$200 

125 

$350 

189 

$495 

265 

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265 

$ 99 

54 

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295 

$ 195 

129 

Bus 4 Math) 

$ 100 

49 

$ 100 

tK 

49 

$395 

239 

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129 

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79 

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69 

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155 

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89 

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45 

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199 

$125 

79 

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48 

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225 

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82 

CALL 


Baagla. GPLE or Alpha Plot each 

S 35 

$ 

27 

Full Beagle line m stock 


CALL 

Borland. Turbo Pascal 

$ 55 

S 

35 

Central Point Copy II Plus (bit copier) 

$ 40 

$ 

25 

Ernst am /Alison. Compiler 

$ 129 

S 

95 

Epson, Graphics Dump 

5 15 

* 

9 

Funk Software. Sideways 

$ 60 

$ 

40 

Hayes. Terminal Prog, tor Smartmodem 

$ 100 

s 

65 

•insoft GraFORTH II by Paul Lutus 

$ 90 

$ 

65 

Microsoft. Fun Line in Stock 


CALL 

Omega. Locksmith 

$ 100 

$ 

75 

Penguin. Complete Graphics System II 

$ 80 

S 

54 

Phoenix Zoom Gratix 

$ 40 

$ 

34 

Quality Bag of Tricks 

$ 40 

s 

29 

United SW1, ASCII Express The Pro 

$130 

$ 

87 

Ubtico. Essential Data Duplicator III 

$ 80 

n 

49 

HOME & EDUCATIONAL 


Barrons. Study Program for SAT 
Beagle Bros.. Full line in Stock 
Bluechip. Millionaire 
Broderbund. Print Shop 
CBS. large Inventory m stock 
•Continental. Home Accountant 
Davidson. Full line in stock 
Dow Jones, Home Budget 
Edu-Ware. Large Inventory in Stock. CALL 
Electronic Arts. Full line in stock 
Harcourt Computer Prep for SAT 
Koala. Full line in stock. CALL 
Learning Co.Large Inventory r Stock.CALL 
Microsoft. Typing Tutor II 
Monoy a m. Dolars & Sense or SAM, ea 
Scarborough/Lightning. Mastertype 
Simon A Schuster Typing Tutor III 
Sub Lojpc. Flight Simulator II 
Tsrrapin, Logo 


$ 75 


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34 
CALL 
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95 $ 69 
40% off list 
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GAMES 


Atari, large Inventory in stock 
Brodwbund F J ine n stock 

t Aztec or Zaxxnn. each $ 

i. Sky Fax or Rnbal $ 

Hayden. Sargon HI Chess) $ 

Inlocom Zork link llZork III ea $ 

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A Castle or Beyond Castle Wbffenstein $ 


Origin. Utbma III $ 

Penguin. Transyteaoa $ 

Profeaaionai. Tnvia Fever $ 

Sierra/On-Line. Ultima II $ 

Sir-Tech. Wizardry $ 

Spinnaker. Full kne in stock. CALL 35% off list 

Sub Logic. Flight Smulator II $ 50 $ 35 


CALL 
CALL 
$ 27 


DISKETTES 

* CONROY-LAPCRNTE- DISKETTES 

We guarantee these top quality products with the Conroy- 
LaPonte name 5 YEAR LIMITED WARRANTY 
10ea, SS/SD. 35Track (Apple, etc) $ 14 

lOOea. SS/SD. 35Track (Apple etc.) $ 120 

lOOOea. SS/SD. 35 Track (Apple etc.) $ 999 

10« DS/DO. 48Track (IBM. H/P) $ 17 

lOOea, DS/DO. 48 Track (IBM. H/P) $ 140 

lOOOea, DS/DO. 48 Track (IBM. H/P) $1190 

CONROY-LAPOINTE T “ 

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10e* DS/DO, 48 Track (tBM-PCPre-tormalted) NEW $ 25 
lOOea. DS/DO. 48 Track (IBM-PC Pre-tormatted) NEW $ 210 
lOOOea DS/DO. 48 Track (IBM-PC Pre-tormatted) NEW $1695 


MODEMS 


ANCHOR Signalman Mark XII 

BM-PC 


UST 
$550 
$ 55 
$750 


COC. lOOea SS/DO, 4<JT (Apple IBM) 
lOea SS/DO 40T (Apple. IBM) 
lOOea DS/DO. 40T (IBM H/P) 
lOea DS/DO. 40T (IBM H/P) $ 75 
DY3AN. lOea SS/00 (Apple efc) $ 40 

10ea DS/DO 48T(!BMH/P,etc) $ 69 
MAXELL 10 ea. SS/DO,3H"(MAC) $60 

10ea.DS/QO. HiDensityOBM-AT) $ 90 

lOeach, MD1. SS/DO $ 55 

10 each, M02 DS/DO $ 75 

MEMOREX 10 ea SS/SD. 3*” (MAC) $ 65 

VERBATIM. lOeach. MD515-0L SS/DO $ 49 
lOeach. MO34. DS/DO $ 84 

lOeach. 3W. SS/DO $4AQ $ 65 

GENERIK "DISKETTES 
AS LOW AS $1 

W/Jackets, 
no labels, top quality. 

90 day warranty 


OUR 

$ 196 
$ 21 
$ 295 
$ 32 


LIST 
$399 
$599 
$ 149 
$329 
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$249 
$289 
$699 
$ 39 
$595 
$595 
$499 
$595 
$389 
$725 
$189 
$149 
$695 


GUARANTEE 
ON GENERIKS 


lOOea. SS/SD, 35Track (Apple. Atari) 
250 ea. SS/SD. 35 Track (Apple Atari) 
lOOOea. SS/SD, 35 Track (Apple, Alan) 
lOOea. DS/DO. 48 Track (IBM. H/P) 
250ea. OS/DO. 48Track (IBM. H/P) 
lOOOea, DS/DO. 48 Track (IBM H/P) 


$415 

$1038 

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$1565 

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$ 85 
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$ 750 
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$ 995 


I8M-PC Smartcom II Software 
Mcromodem lie w/Smartcom 
Mcromodem 100 (S100 bus) 

Stack Chronograph (RS-232) 

Stack Smartmodem 300(RS232) 

Smartmodem 1200 (RS-232) 

IBM-PC to Modem Cable 
KENSINGTON. Modem 1200 
NOVATION. 103/212 Smart Cat 
SmartCat Plus w /software (MAC) 

ACCESS 1-2-3 (12006Crosstalk XVI) 

Apple Cat II 300 BAUD 
212 Apple Cat 1200 BAUD 
Cat 
J-Cat 

212 Auto Cat 
PROMETHEUS. ProModem 1200(MAC) $495 
ProModem 120GB (IBM) $ 399 

QUADRAM. Quadmodem, Internal IBM $595 
Quadmodem. Stand alone $ 695 

MONITORS 

•AMDEK. Color Senes 

Color 300 Comp /Aud* $349 

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Color 600 Ht Res. RGB /Audio $649 

Color 700U*ra Hi Res, RG8 $749 

12" Green, N300G $179 

12" Amber #30GA $199 

12" Amber. #31QA for IBM-PC $230 

13". Color IV. RGB. 720Hx400V.|BM $ 795 
PRINCETON. RGB Hi Res, HX-12 $ 795 

RG8 Hi Res, SR-12 $799 

Scan Doubler for SR-12 $249 

Amber MAX-12 (tor Mono Board) $ 249 

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12" Green, ZVM 123 $200 

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OUR 

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$ 189 
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t 489 
$ 19 
$ 385 
$ 415 
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$ 139 
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PRINTERS 

DOTMATRIX 


UST 


PRINTER INTERFACES 
& BUFFERS ust our 


EPSON. JX80—Cotor Printer. 160 cps 
LQ150Q 200 4 67cps 
RX80-100 cps 
RX80—F/T 

RX 100-100 cps. 136 ooLpmJJr. 

FX80—160 cps 
FX100-160 cps 
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TALLY. 160-80 col, 160cps $ 798 

180-132col, 160cps $1098 
OKJDATA, 82A—80col, 120 cps, para $ 
83A—132col, 120 cps. para 
84-136col. 200cps. para 

92— 80 col.. 160 cps, para 

93— 136 col, 160 cps, para 
2410P—Pacemark, 350c ps. para 

QUADRAM. Quadfet Inkjet Color Prmte 
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Genwv 15'X. 120cps. 15" 

TOSHIBA. 

1340-144 cps(LQ) 4 54cps|DQ) NEW $ 995 
1351—100 cps $1896 

TTX TTXpress. portable /handhe«.40cps $ 229 


$1396 

$269 

$369 

$499 

$r 

$1 


$749 

$1396 

$499 

$799 

$2995 

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$499 

$549 


InStock 
InStock 
InStock 
InStock 
InStock 
InStock 
$ 299 
$ 568 
$ 778 
$ 319 
) 599 
$1095 
$ 399 
$ 649 
$1995 
$ 795 
$ 269 
$ 419 

$ 795 
$1375 
$ 129 


ARBO. IBM-PC to Para Printer Cable $ 60 
EPSON. Parallel Interface for LQ1500 $ 100 

Serial Interface Board $ 130 

MPCA*tefll/F4CaUe tor Epson 4 Germ $ 96 
OWDATA. Ptog n F4ay. Tractore, Otepaptiea $ 50 
ORANGE MtCROGrappier Plus for Apple $149 

Buffered Grappler Ptos, 1« $ 239 

PRACTICAL Mcrobuff In-Line 64K,para $349 

Microbuff In-Line 64K,ser $ 349 __ 

QUADRAM. All expandable (*/copy to 512K) (Snapon to 64K) 
Microfazer, w/Copy. PP, 8K, #MP8w/PS $179 $ 139 

Miaofazer, w/Copy. PP. 64K. #MP64 w/PS $ 299 - 

Mioofazer. w/Copy. PP, 128K. w/PS $ 375 
Microfazer, Snap-on, 8K. PP. Epson w/PS $ 169 
Microfazer SnafFon, 64K. PP. Epson w/PS $ 299 
STAR MICRO. Serial Interface 4 Cable $ 92 


$ 30 
$ 79 
$ 105 
$ 59 
$ 42 
$ 99 
$ 159 
$ 259 
$ 259 


$ 229 
$ 345 
$ 129 
$ 229 
$ 79 


LETTER QUALITY: 

•JUKI 6300—40cps. para $ 995 $ 795 

•JUKL 6100—18cps, para 3 p4ch $ 599 $449 

•TTX 1014—13cps4»ra4Ser4*i4fTKti) $ 499 $ 365 
1114—same* 1014w/T/f 2ooljprop $ 599 $ 439 

PLOTTERS: 

AMDEK, Amplot II. 6 pen, 10* 14 Bod $1099 $899 

PRINTER SUPPLIES: 

Tractor Food Paper, Ribbon*, Daisy Wheel* CALL 


CABLES 

ARBO. IBM-PC to Modem Cable $ 31 

IBM-PC to Para Printer Cable $ 60 

ASTAR.RF Modulator for T V (Apple) $ 35 

CURTIS Monitor Extension Cable (IBM) $ 50 

3 9' Keyboard Extens. Cable (IBM) $ 40 

RCA. Monitor Cable $ 15 

STAR MICRO, Serial Interlace 4 Cable $ 92 

ACCESSORIES 

Curbs. ftamond. 6 outlets, switched $ 50 

Emerald. 6 outlets. 6' cord $ 60 

Ruby. 6 outlets, 6 cord, ffter $ 90 

Sappfwe. 3 outlets, w /Nter $ 80 

EPD. Lemon $ 60 

Urne $ 90 

Orange $ 140 

Peach $ 98 

INNOVATIVE. Hprvfite 10 ftekette holder) $ 7 

Flip-n-Fle 50 (diskette holder) $ 22 

Kensington, Masterpece (IBM) $ 140 

PC Saver™ Une Cord w/faer (IBM) $ 50 

Remote Control (IBM) $ 180 

System Saver Fan (Apple) $ 90 

NETWORX WWree 4outet w/8ter 4surge $ 70 

PERFECT DATA Head Qearang KN $ 16 


$ 115 

I 35 
$ 12 


, CREDIT CARD 
I APPUCA TtOR FORM 

I Hease send me a Conroy 
LaPxnle aedf card w 
I appkcalxxi term I under Z? 
. stand there b no 3% charge 
| on Conroy LaPxnte cred* 

| card purchases Mxxmum 


r*a puchase is $400 


ADORE SS I 

_ I 

Y STATE ZIP | 

M AM. TO: T206 OSW Garden Piece, Portland. OR 9722^ j 


ORDERING INFORMATION A TERMS: 


MAN. TO 12060 SW Garden Place Podtend. Oft 97223- Indude your 

double check your figures for Shipping, Insurance and Handling (SIH) All kerns 
NO C.O.D. CasNers checks, money orders. Fortune 1000 checks and government checks—we immediately honor Person* and other company checte—allow 
Prices reflect 3% cash discount so ADO 3% to above pnc» for VISA MasterCard or American Express. Add SIH CHARGES: U S Mainland. 3% ($5 minimum) 


ground. UPS Blue 6% ($10 mnmum). tor US Postal. APO or FPO, 12% ($15 minimum) Hawaa—UPS Blue For Alaska or Canada—UPS m some areas only t» 
or write, or specify Post* Foragr orders except Canada. 18% ($25 mmimum) Monitors by Postal or to toreigi countries. 30% ($50 minimum) Orders received wim 
charges wi be refunded AN prices, avakatxkty and specifications sublet to errors or change without notice, so cal to verify AN goods are new. include warranty anc 
to work Due to our low prices and our assurance that you wfl get new, unused products— ALL SALES ARE FINAL Cal before returning goods for repair 

ORDER DESK HOURS—6AM to 6PM PST. Monday throt«h Friday Saturday 10 to 4 (6AM here s 9AM in New York.) 

Econo KAN" Fartafc™ aad 6*wrt™art te i dewrt a of CoaiX Co^oraboitPC HfCard™aad- ' ' ‘ *“ 


telephone number, 
usually m stock. 
20 days to dear 
lor standard UPS 
others Postal—caN 
i insufficient SIH 
I are guaranteed 
or replacement 


124 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


































LOW PRICES TO PROFESSIONALS WHO KNOW WHAT THEY WANT AND KNOW HOW TO USE IV 


COMPUTER 

SYSTEMS 

— Call for Details — 


256K IMff: 

360K 

Disk Drives 
byCDC 

90 Day 

Limited Warranty 
By Us 


I -PC 





comMa Portable. 

256K. 2 360K Disk Drives 

^ SANYOs^ 

256K, 2 320K Disk Drive, 


CALL 


Tel^/ideoi 


256K 2 360K Disk Drives. 8088 Chip 




Z150. 

256K, 2 320K Disk Drives. 

MS DOS 2 1. 8088 Chip. 2 S/P 


DRIVES 

for the IBM-PC or XT 


AND 

ACCESSORIES 


Amdisk V. 7 height internal. 320/360K 
Amdisk III, 3'Dual Floppies,50GK 


es 

CONTRpL 

DATA 


DISK DRIVES 
320K/360K 
DS/DD 


Call For Larger #1 , 

- I 



Quantity Prices 2-LU9 FULL HEIGHT 

$149 HALF HEIGHT 

30 Day Umited Warranty by Factory Authonzed Distributor 
CDCy ^ Hi Dual Drive Installation Kit $ 30 


MAYNARD, Floppy ConL (w/Para Port) 
Interface w /Para Port 
Interface w/Ser Port 


•k MEANS A BEST BUY 


FOR YOUR IBM-PC or XT 


« 1984 by Conroy-LaPointe. Inc 
All Rights Reserved 


$ 16 

$300 $ 239 
$300 $ 185 
$310 $ 195 


PERFECT DATA. Head Cleaning Kit $ 16 $ 12 

QUAI*V\M 

Quaddisk Internal Hard Disks w /Controller IN STOCK 


HARDDISKS 

nvert your PC to 10 meg and to be XT compabbte _ 
e of the following INTERNAL HARD DISK SYSTEMS Kits 
t quality engineered to work with DOS 2 0/2 1 Com¬ 
pletely XT compatible All you need is your DOS manual 
Easy to install Includes 10 Megabyte Hard Disk. Controller 
1 and Instructions 

K K an qii UT 
Lefts 

♦Megaflight 100. 10 mbyte Hard Disk Kit $ 799 

MAYNARD 

10 meg Hard Disk Kit WS1 Sandstar 
Controller will accept 3 Sandstar modules $1396 $1150 



UST 

OUR 

/1CT ADVANTAGE MuJbf Bd tor AT 
AOI SoPakP1us.64K.S/P/CC*S/W 


CAU. 

$395 

$ 245 

SxPakRus259LS/FVCC*S/W 

$ 695 

$ 395 

9xP*f\&38*.S/P/0>S/W 

$895 

$ 465 

Game Port tor Six Pak 

$ 50 

$ 39 

I/O Plus II. S/P/CC 

$215 

$ 150 

I/O Plus II, S/P/CC/G 

$265 

$ 185 

I/O Plus II. 2S/P/CC/G 

$315 

$ 215 

Mono&aphHu^P/€C(tortptos) 

$496 

$ 375 

PCNet. Starter Kit, PC002 

$1490 

$ 795 

PCNet Circuit Board.PC001 

$695 

$ 365 

ComboPlus Products 


CALL 

MegaPkis Product 


CAU. 

/*■ idtic UNKMontorttt&swivel base 
CURTIS 3to 9 Keyboard Exten Cable 

$ 50 

$ 39 

$ 40 

$ 30 

Vertical CPU "System Stand" 

$ 25 

$ 19 

Monochrome Ext Cable Pair 

$ 50 

$ 35 

HAUPPAGE 8 «PCh.p . 

$ 175 

$ 159 

runuA 8087 Math Pak 

(m,WJ 8087 Software Pak 

$295 

$ 235 

$ 180 

$ 138 

8087 Macro Pak 

$245 

$ 195 

UCDTI II CC Cotor Card w/para. 
MtnV/ULtO Graphics Card. Mono 

$245 

$499 

$ 169 
$ 329 

KAMERMAN, External Power Supply 

$395 

$ 295 

KENSINGTON, Masterpiece 

$ 140 

$ 95 

PC Saver ™ Une Cad w /Fitter 

$ 50 

$ 39 

Kpv Tronic KB5150. std. keyboard 
Key iionic^^j ad keyboard 

$209 

$255 

$ 159 
$ 199 

KB5151 ir. keyboard 

$255 

$ 199 

14 * Koala Pad’“w/PC Design 

110010 Progammer’s Guide 

$ 150 
$ 15 

$ 89 
$ 14 

||A VNADn Mulbfuncbon ( 6 ) Card. MFC 
RIM T NMKU Memory Card no RAM 

V Memory Card 258< 

ccdicc HardOsk 1 /F Module (HDM) 

St RILS HardOrsk Cable 

$ 89 
$ 199 

$ 79 
$ 169 

$495 

$ 395 

$499 

$ 399 

$ 30 

$ 27 

Para Port Module (PPM) 

$ 59 

$ 49 

Senal ftxt Module (SPM) 

$ 95 

$ 79 

Clock Cal Module (CCM) 

$ 55 

$ 48 

Game Adapter Module (GPM) 

$ 49 

$ 43 

Memory Module tTK (MMO) 

$ 122 

$ 99 

Memory Modiie 256K (MM256) 

$422 

$ 357 

XT10 meg Hard Dsk&l/FWSl 

$1395 

$1150 


MICRON. 4164 CNpS 200 ns 


LIST 
$ 12 


M|cfK)SOfT *®rC*! 2 » | 6 » 


PC f Booster w*h Mouse 
System Card, 64K 


$495 

$395 


MOUSE SYSTEMS PC Mouse w/PC Pant $ 295 
PARADISE, Modular Graphics Card $ 395 

PLANTR0NICS 

Color Board & Color mage. 16 color, w/Para $ 559 
Color Board & Draftsman. 16 color. w/Para $ 559 


| QUADRAM 


* Quad board no RAM expand to 384K $ 295 

* Quadboard 64K. expand to 384K.S/P/CC $ 395 

* Quadboard 256K. expand to 384K.S/P/CC $ 675 

* Quadboard 384K. S/P/CC/G $ 795 

Quadboard II no RAM expand to 256K $ 295 
Quadboard II. 64K.expand to 2S6K.2S/X $ 395 
Quadboard II. 2501 2S/CC $ 595 

Quad 512 ♦ 64K plus senal port $ 325 
Quad 512 ♦ 256K plus senal port $ 550 
Quad 512 ♦ 512K plus senal port 
Quadcolor I. board. 16 colors 

* Upgrade Quadcolor I to II kit 
Quadvue, board. Mono/S/P/CC 

* Quadchrome, 12” RGB Color Monitor 
Quadchrome II. 14" RGB Color Monitor $ 650 
Amberchrome. 12" Amber Monitor $250 

278 $1195 

E V! $2295 

IX $1995 

* Quadhnk $ 680 

TG PRODUCTS, wac, $ 45 
Titan Accelerator PC (8066* 128K) $ 995 


$895 

$295 

$275 

$795 


$ 450 
$ 139 
$ 329 
$ 275 

$ 189 
$ 285 


$ 395 
$ 395 


$ 225 
$ 245 
$ 475 
) 525 
$ 215 
$ 265 
$ 395 
$ 265 
$ 420 
$ 625 
$ 195 
$ 199 
CALL 
$ 495 
$ 450 
$ 165 
$1090 
$1545 
$1745 
$ 449 


$ 29 
$ 750 


A Chip Kit 

$35 

9 Each, 4164, 200 ns 
90 Day Warranty by us 



©1983 
Conroy-LaRwnte, Inc. 


★ ComX 

EconoRAM T *384K BOARD 


$350 


WWi Fastrak" RAM Disk Emulator and Spooler Software 
Fufty Compatible, 1 Year United Warranty by ComX 
Works on DOS 1.1,2.0or 2.1 
Prices and avadaMRy subject to change. Cad 


UST OUR 

PRICE PRICE 


SOFTWARE for IlM-PC or XT 


BUSINESS & TRAINING 


APPLIED SOFT, Versaform $ 389 

ARKTRONICS, Jane $ 295 

♦ASHTON-TATE. Framework $ 695 

* dBase IN $ 695 

* dBase II. *eq. PC DOS & 128K) $ 495 

* dBase II to III upgrade $ 200 

Everyman $ DB Primer 0ook) $ 15 

Friday' $295 

ATI Training Progams—large Inventory $ 75 
BPI, Job Cost Accounting $ 795 

Gen'l Acctg. AR, AP or PR each $ 595 

Personal Accounting $ 195 

♦BROOERBUND, Bank Street Writer $ 80 
CDEX Training Programs—Large Inventory $ 70 
♦CONTINENTAL. Utrafite $ 195 

Tax Advantage $ 70 

Home Accountant Plus $150 

FCM (Fikng, Catalogng Mating) $125 

Property Management $ 495 

DNJTHIUM PRESS PC to MAC & Back $100 
DOW JONES, Investment Evaluator $ 139 
Market Manager $ 300 

Market Analyzer $ 350 

Market Mcroscope $ 350 

FOX 1 (SELLER dUbWS-DOS or CP/M 88 $ 99 
Quickcode or dGraph. each $ 295 

HARVARD, Total Project Manager NEW $ 495 
Harvard Protect Manager $ 395 

HAYDEN. Pie Wnter $ 200 

Pie Speller or Sargon III, each $ 50 

HOWARDSOFT. Tax Preparer $ 250 

Real Estate Analyzer $250 

HUMAN EDGE.OommunctooreEdge NEW $ 195 
Mind Prober NEW $ 50 

ManagementSate a Negobakon Edgaea $250 
IU& Easy Writer II System $ 350 

EasySpeller II $ 85 

GL AR AP, 0E or INV, each $595 

Business System GL*AR*AP $1496 

♦JNSOFT.GraFORTH (aiwnated 30 g*hes) $ 125 
♦KENSfNGTOPLEasy bnk Mari Manager $ 95 
KNOWARE. Knoware (reg graphics) 

UFETREE. Volks wnter Deluxe 


BUSINESS & TRAINING 


UTILITY & SYSTEM 


IMS 

InfoStar Plus (♦ Starburst) $595 

MalMerge. SpelStar or Stertndex. ea. $ 99 
ProOpbon Pak (MM/SS/SI) $ 195 

♦MICRORIM, RBase Senes 4000 $ 495 

Extended Report Whter $150 

RBase Clout $195 

MICROSOFT, Spel NEW $ 50 

Mulbpian $195 

Chart or Protect each $250 

Wbrd $375 

Word with Mouse $ 475 

MONOGRAM. Dotes & $Bnse w/forecast $180 
MULTIMATE. Mukmate $ 495 

OPENSYS.GURAP.PRINVorPO.each $695 
♦OSBORNE/COMX (Book & Busin, Start & Math 
Programs on DS/DD Disks) 
Some Common Basic Programs (70 ea.) $ 100 
Practical Basic Progams $ 100 

PEACHTREE. Peach Pak $ 395 

Peach Text 5000 $ 395 

PERFECT/THORN. Perfect Wnter $ 349 
Perfect writer ASpefer Combo $399 
PROFESSIONAL Trnna Fever $ 40 

QUADRAM. Tax Strategy $ 395 

Investment Strategy $ 395 

QUE, Uara l-23or 1-2-3 tor BusrassfBoole} $ 15 
ROSESOrr. Protoy $ 130 

SOFTWARE ARTS, 


77 DIGITAL RE&, CBASIC 86" (CP/M86) $200 
315 C8ASK Compter (CP/M -86 a PCOO&Mf $600 

54 PL/1 |PC DOS) $750 

> 105 PL/1 (CP/M-86) $ 750 

Speed Prog. Pkg. (CP/M-86J $200 

DR LOGO-86 (CP/M86) $100 

FUNK SOFTWARE. Sideways $ 60 

HAYES, Smartcom II (Data Com.) $149 


125 
32 
125 
150 
1 236 
209 
105 
296 
i 429 


239 
239 
1 179 
199 
25 
296 
296 
12 
87 


TK Solver (MS DOS or PC DOS, spec) $399 

SOFTWARE DIM. Accounting Plus $ 495 

SOFTWARE INTL Open Access $695 

SOFTWARE PUBUSHING.PFSJteport $ 125 

PFSfte.PFSWhte.PFSfiraph,PFSflan $ 140 

PFSProof $ 95 

SORCIM. SuperCalc III $ 395 

S9I/SATELLITE. WordPerfect $ 496 

Personal WordPerfect $ 195 

STONEWARE. Advanced D.R Master $ 595 


edProg. Pkg. (CP/M- 
L0G0-86(#/M86) 

(SOFTWARE. Side 
•S. Smartcom II (Data 
♦fNSOFT, GraF ORTH Lam mated 3D gaph) $ 12S 
LIFEBOAT, Lattice C. NEW $500 

MICROSTUF, Crosstalk XVI ffteta Com.) $195 
MICROSOFT. muMath /mu Simp $ 300 
Business BASIC Compiler $ 600 

Pascal Compiler $ 300 

C Compiler $ 500 

BASIC Compter $395 

FORTRAN Compter $350 

COBOL Compter $700 

MOUSE SYSTEMS. PC Pamt NEW $ 99 
NORTON. Ublibes 2. Q 14 progams $ 80 
OPEN SYS, BASIC Interpreter NEW $ 195 
ROSESOFT, Prokey $ 130 


HOME & EDUCATIONAL 


♦ARMONK. Executive Suite $ 40 

BLUE CHIP, Millionaire or Tycoon,each $ 60 
BPI SYSTEMS, Personal Accounting $ 99 
CBS, Large Inventory in Stock 
COMPREHER. PCTutor(l.lor2.0lM.) I 60 
CONTINENTAL Home Accountant Plus $ 150 
DAVIDSON, The Speed Reader II $ 75 
Wbrd Attack' or MathHaster!, each $ 50 

DOW JONES. Home Budget - 

HARCOURT. Computer SAT 
MICROSOFT. Flight Simulator II 
MONOGRAM. Dollars & Sense 
PBL CORP., Personal Investor 
SCARBOROUGH. MasterType 


SUMMA. Trader's Forecast 
Trader's Dtfa Manager 
Trader’s Accountant 


$250 

$200 

$350 

$700 

$250 


$ 295 
$ 395 
$ 79 
$ 99 
$ 59 
$ 245 

$ 395 
$ 159 
$ 129 
I 219 


$139 
$ 80 
$ 50 
$165 
$145 
$ 50 

SIMON 6 SCHUSTER. TypmgTutorlN $ 50 


LIVING VIDEOTEXT, Think Tank 
LOTUS, 12 3 

Symphony 

MDBS, Knowledge™an 
MECA. Managing Your Money 
MICROPRO, WordStar* 

VtordStar 2000 
WordStar 2000 Plus 
WordStar Professional Plus 
WordStar Professional, 4 Pak 


UTILITY & SYSTEM 


GAMES 


ATARI Oenbped* Padten or Donkey each $ 35 
♦BNOOEABUNOi Urge kwertery « Bock 
ELECTRONIC ARTlFul Une m Stock 


$495 

$ 309 

BORLAND. Sidekick 

1 55 $ 35 

HAYDEN, Sargon III (Chess) 

$ 

50 | 34 

$695 

$ 465 

Sidekick (Copiatte) 

$ 85 $ 55 

INFOCOM. Deadline a Suspended, ea. 

$ 

50 $ 33 

$500 

$ 300 

Turbo Pascal or Toolbox, ea 

$ 55 $ 35 

ZorK 1 or 2ork II or Zorfc III each 

$ 

40 $ 27 

$195 

$ 125 

♦CENTRAL POINT, Copy II PC 

$ 40 $ 30 

♦INSOFT, Mystnx.Vtordtnx a Quotnx,ea 

$ 

35 $ 29 

$350 

$ 109 

♦COMX Fastrak". RAM/Disk emulator 


MICROSOFT, Fkght Simulator H 

$ 

50 $ 33 

$495 

$ 295 

and printer spooler progam Woks on any 


ORIGIN. Utoma II 

$ 

60 $ 38 

$595 

$ 325 

PC /DOS version or RAMCard Menu Driven $ 100 $ 59 

PROFESSIONAL Tnvu Fever 

$ 

40 $ 29 

$695 

$ 396 

DIGITAL RES, CP/M-86" (PC/XT) 

$ 80 $ 39 

SPINNAKER. Large Inventory m Stock 


CAU. 

$495 

$ 265 

Concurrent CP/M-86" w/windows 

$835 $ 225 

SUB LOGIC Night Mission Pm ball 

$ 

40 $ 27 


CASM-n-CARRY COMPUTER STORES. INC. 

Over the counter sales only Open Monday through Saturday. 10:00 to 600. 
SAN FRANCISCO - NEW STORE! 550 Washington Street 
(at Montgomery, opposite the Pyramid). Interstate 80. to Highway 
480. take Washington Street Exit. CALL (415) 992-6212. 
PORTLAND. OREGON — At Park 217, Tiaard at intersection of 
Highways 217 and 99W CALL (§03) 620 5595 
SEATTLE. WASHINGTON - 3540 128th Ave SE. Bellevue. WA 
98006. In Loehmann s Plaza near Factoua Square, South East of 
Highway 405 & 90 and at South East 36th and Richards. CALL 641-4736. 


sS 

NO 

SALES TAX 


OUR REFERENCES: 

We have been in computers and electronics since 
1958. a computer dealer since 1978 and m compu¬ 
ter mail order since 1960 Banks: 1st Interstate 
Bank. (503 643-4678 We belong to the Chamber of 
Commerce (503) 228-9411 and Direct Marketing 
Assoc abon, or call Dunn and Bradstreet if you are a 



CONROY - 

h 



STSLTOLL FREE 
(80Q) 547-1289 

OREGON ONLY (8001 451-5151 

Foragn 

i 

Portland 

(503)620-9877 

HOT UNE 

Information on your order 

(503) 620-9678 

WEEKDAYS ONLY 1 

ORDER DESK HOURS 

Mon-Frt— 6 AMI 0 WMPfT 
Steudv—10AM to 4PM PIT 

(6AM hares 9AM nNM York) 


Inquiry 72 for IBM Peripherals. Inquiry 73 for Apple. Inquiry 74 for all others. 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 125 
















































THE MAC OFFICE 


era ted by the new arrival. 

AppleTalk divides node addresses 
into two classes: server node and user 
node. The system reserves 2 55 pos¬ 
sible addresses; hexadecimal address 
FF is a special "broadcast" address 
used to reserve the line for transmis¬ 
sion as part of the network's scheme. 

AppleTalk is based on an open sys¬ 
tem architecture (see figure 1). Apple 
has published detailed information on 
the suite of network protocols that 
comprise AppleTalk and has held a 
number of seminars to aid third-party 
vendors that are developing software 


and hardware applications for the 
network. 

The AppleTalk protocols implement 
a packet-switching scheme that pro¬ 
vides functional correspondence with 
the International Standards Organiza¬ 
tion (ISO) Open Systems Interconnec¬ 
tion (OSI) model. Protocols equivalent 
to the ISO OSI layers 1 through 5 
(physical, data link, network, trans¬ 
port, and session) are at the core of 
AppleTalk. 

The access scheme to the network 
is based on a CSMA/CA (carrier sense 
multiple access with collision 


avoidance) model. Although both 
AppleTalk and Ethernet are based on 
a bus topology, they differ in the way 
they handle the problem of data col¬ 
lisions on the network. 

Ethernet provides hardware capa¬ 
bility for detecting collisions. Apple- 
Talk, on the other hand, implements 
collision avoidance in software at the 
data-link level. The AppleTalk Link- 
Access Protocol (ATLAP) software 
handles the address-assignment 
mechanism, the frame format, and the 
frame transmission and reception 
process. 

In the AppleTalk collision-avoidance 
scheme all transmitters wait until the 
line is idle. This time interval is deter¬ 
mined by the generation of a pseudo¬ 
random number whose range is ad¬ 
justed based on perceived bus traffic. 

As part of this scheme each trans¬ 
mitter can send special broadcast 
frames (addressed to all nodes in the 
network) that reserve the line by in¬ 
forming other nodes that it is prepar¬ 
ing to send a packet. The transmitters 
use directed frames (or packets) to 
send data to a single address on the 
network. 

While a transmitting node is send¬ 
ing to a receiving node, a dialogue 
takes place. If a collision occurs dur¬ 
ing the dialogue, the sending node 
backs off and tries again, adjusting the 
randomly generated time interval. 
This adjustment follows a linear back¬ 
off algorithm that changes dynamical¬ 
ly in response to recent network-traffic 
history. If the node detects collisions 
among recently sent packets, this sug¬ 
gests higher loading and greater con¬ 
tention for the bus. Thus, the random 
wait that is generated is calculated 
over a larger range, effectively spread¬ 
ing out the different contenders for 
the line. 

Apple reports that it has extensive¬ 
ly tested AppleTalk's CSMA/CA pro¬ 
tocol and is satisfied with its ability to 
remain stable under heavy network 
loads. 

In addition to ATLAP. AppleTalk 
consists of a variety of other protocols 
that generally correspond to other 
levels of the ISO OSI model. 

( continued ) 


AppleTalk Protocol Architecture 

Layered, Open System 



Figure 1: A diagram of AppleTalk's protocol architecture, printed by the 
LaserWriter. 


126 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 











































TIED UP 

WITH DATA RECORDING? 


Here comes SEED to set you free. 


Are you frequently tied up with typing large 
amounts of data from printouts into your personal 
computer, or frustrated at not being able to use it 
while it is being used as an expensive data collection 
device? If so, then let a SEED set you and your PC 
free. 

These highly portable and cost effective data 
recording units allow you to continuously record 
data wherever and whenever you want via an RS- 
232C serial interface onto a diskette for analysis or 
editing later on your PC. 

SEED 1 is intended for use with an Apple II 
compatible disk drive (single or dual drive - 120 
Kbyte memory per disk) and after recording, the dis¬ 
kette can be loaded into your Apple II, He or III per¬ 
sonal computer. 

SEED 2 is intended for use with an IBM PC and 
has the additional advantages of a built-in disk drive 
unit, a 350 Kbyte memory, single or double sided, 
double density disks, and dip switch selectable baud 
rate, parity and data bits. 

An optional analogue/digital conversion unit 
is available for each model. 



Both SEEDs can be used for a really wide range of 
data recording applications: 

in the office where data can be recorded from 
mainframe, other computers or serial communica¬ 
tion networks 

in the laboratory where results can be recor¬ 
ded from samples being measured continuously, in¬ 
cluding overnight runs 

on the factory floor where performance data 
can be recorded from instruments undergoing qual¬ 
ity control testing prior to shipment 

So now there’s no need to get tied up with data 
recording. All you need is SEED. 


mariachioy 

Iso-Heikkilantie 14, SF-20200 Turku, Finland, 
Tel. (9)21-307 000, Telex 62665 maroy sf 




USA, CMK Associates, Inc., (408) 374 1805; CANADA, Fisher Scientific, (613) 226 8874; W. GERMANY, LKB Instrument GmbH, (89) 85830, Isolab, (05609) 2736; FRANCE, LKB Instruments 
S.A., (6) 928 6507; AUSTRIA, LKB Instrument Ges.m.b.H, (0222) 92 1607; ENGLAND, LKB Instruments Ltd., (01) 657 8822; SWEDEN, SEED Trading, (08) 768 5595. 

Apple is a registered trademark of Apple Computer, Inc. IBM PC is a registered trademark of International Business Machines, Corp. 


Inquiry 196 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 127 










THE MAC OFFICE 


While ATLAP handles node-to-node 
delivery of packets on a single Apple- 
Talk network, a Datagram Delivery 
Protocol (DDP) extends this mecha¬ 
nism to socket-to-socket delivery 
Sockets are logical entities in the in¬ 
dividual nodes of a network. An in¬ 
dividual socket is identified by a 
1-byte address. Therefore, there can 
be as many as 2 56 different socket ad¬ 
dresses on a single node. The DDP is 
designed to provide addressing and 
packet delivery between several 
AppleTalk networks connected by a 
bridge. A bridge might consist of a 
single node connected to two Apple- 
Talk networks or it might consist of 
two nodes, each connected to a sep¬ 
arate AppleTalk network, connected 
by a communications channel. 

Additional protocols include a 
routing table maintenance protocol 
(RTMP) that permits any AppleTalk 
node to 'discover'' network routing in¬ 
formation, such as the number of the 


LAN to which it is directly attached; 
a name-binding protocol (NBP) that 
permits users to access network ad¬ 
dresses by names rather than num¬ 
bers; and the AppleTalk transaction 
protocol (ATP), designed to ensure 
loss-free delivery of packets from a 
source socket to a destination socket. 

On the Macintosh, these protocols 
are implemented as 5.5K bytes of 
code written in assembly language. 
Because the SCC chip handles ad¬ 
dress recognition, the network pro¬ 
tocols take no system overhead unless 
a particular node is directly addressed 
over the network. 

Initially AppleTalk will link groups 
of Macintosh computers to the Laser¬ 
Writer laser printer, an impressive 
68000-based electronic printing 
system that will provide hard-copy 
output of any text or graphical image 
that can be displayed on the Macin¬ 
tosh screen. The special significance 
of the LaserWriter is that it is in¬ 


tegrated with PostScript, a page- 
image-description language devel¬ 
oped by Adobe Systems, a start-up 
company founded by a group of elec¬ 
tronic-printing experts who recently 
left Xerox Corporation (see the text 
box "Adobe Systems and the Post¬ 
Script Language" below). PostScript is 
essential to the viability of AppleTalk 
because it permits extensive com¬ 
pression of the information the Laser¬ 
Writer needs to print bit-map images. 

Laser Technology 

Laser printers are fast, quiet, and 
capable of high-resolution printing. 
Until recently, they have also been 
very expensive, ranging from $50,000 
to $400,000. 

A laser printer has a raster-scanning 
laser that projects the print image 
onto an electrostatically charged 
photosensitive drum. A set of rotating 
mirrors manipulates the beam—the 
laser itself doesn't move. Wherever 
the laser beam touches the drum, the 
static charge is nullified. Tbner (par¬ 
ticles of colored plastic) is then at¬ 
tracted to those points. The printer 
rolls paper against the drum and the 
toner sticks to the paper. Finally, a hot 
fuser permanently affixes the toner by 
melting it onto the page. 

The price of laser printers has 
dropped dramatically because of de¬ 
velopments such as Canon's LBP-CX 
marking engine. That engine, which is 
also used in Canon's personal copiers, 
combines several fundamental printer 
components into a single, inexpen¬ 
sive, disposable cartridge. Because 
those same components—including 
the toner and drum—frequently 
needed repair and replacement on 
laser printers, the Canon engine great¬ 
ly improves reliability. 

The LaserWriter's disposable car¬ 
tridges (made by Canon) cost $99 
each and will print approximately 
3000 pages. That puts the price in the 
range of 3 cents per page. The Laser¬ 
Writer prints on ordinary copy paper 
but can also use bond paper, Euro¬ 
pean and legal-size paper, transparen¬ 
cies, envelopes, labels, or even busi¬ 
ness cards. Several different toner 

( continued) 


Adobe Systems and 
the PostScript Language 


A dobe Systems Inc., of Palo Alto. 

California, was started by a 
number of researchers who left Xerox's 
PARC (Palo Alto Research Center). In 
particular, lohn Warnock, president of 
Adobe, was a principal scientist at 
PARC for raster-graphic display tech¬ 
niques. Charles Geschke. the executive 
vice-president, was a manager of the 
Imaging Sciences Laboratory at PARC. 

Adobe is trying to make PostScript— 
their text and graphics language—a 
business standard. Unlike most print- 
file description languages. PostScript is 
not a static, data-structured written 
description; it is a programming lan¬ 
guage. When the Macintosh commu¬ 
nicates with the LaserWriter, it actual¬ 
ly sends a program across AppleTalk. 

According to Geschke. "When the 
program arrives at the 68000 in the 
printer and begins executing, it has one 
very interesting side effect, namely, it 
drives the video on that laser and pro¬ 
duces output. But it is really a program 
description that is generated on the 
Macintosh and is executed on the 
printer.'' By using PostScript, the 


amount of information sent across 
AppleTalk can be trimmed, in some 
cases, to just 10 percent more than the 
raw ASCII (American Standard Code 
for Information Interchange) data. 

PostScript is completely encoded in 
the printable character subset of 7-bit 
ASCII code and so is completely invisi¬ 
ble across any kind of communications 
line, not just AppleTalk. PostScript can 
handle any material: text, line-art, 
photographies, and even color (for 
printers that can use it). While photo¬ 
graphic images are sent as bit maps, 
graphics are sent as commands and 
the fonts are sent as mathematical 
outlines (based on Bezier cubics) that 
can be stroked, filled, scaled, oriented, 
or used as clipping boundaries. And 
it is flexible, as Geschke pointed out. 
"If you're really into graphic art you can 
adjust the shape of the half-tone dot, 
the shape of the tonal production 
curve, the orientation of the screen, 
and its frequency.” 

Adobe isn’t only working with Apple. 
You’ll be seeing PostScript in other 
systems from other companies. 


128 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 







Windows With A View 
Toward The Future 

The Window 
Machine™ occupies 
only 12K! Written in 
tight, fast Assembler, 
it performs like a 
racing engine...with 
more power than 
you’ll probably ever 
need. Yet, it’s an 
engine designed to fit 
in the vehicle of 
your choice...from a 
“stripped-down” 

128K IBM PC to a 
fully loaded AT. The 
programs you write 
today will run on 
the broadest range of 
machines possible... 
now, and in the 
future. 

Windows Bigger 
Than Your Screen? 

Here’s where the 
VSI part of our name 
fits in. VSI means 
Virtual Screen Inter¬ 
face. Behind each 
window, there’s a 
much bigger picture. 

VSI defines virtual 
screens rather than just windows. The 
window itself shows whatever portion of 
its virtual screen you wish to exhibit at 
any given point in your program. Each 
screen can be up to 128 x 255 (columns x 
rows, or rows x columns). And there are 
more than 100 screen primitives at your 
command. 

Multilingual Windows 

You can order The Window Machine 
with the language interface of your choice: 
C, Pascal, Compiled Basic, Fortran, Cobol, 
or PLl. We’ve even recently completed 


These are 
coders' 
windows... 
designed to be 
built into the 
programs you 
are writing. 
They can 
overlap, move 
anywhere on 
the screen, 
grow, shrink, 
vanish or blink. 
They can be 
bordered in 
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Color or 
monochrome 
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Schuster, 3COM, 
Tymshare, and 
Revlon choose 
VSI—The Window 
Machine? ' 

(and how come 
you can buy it for 
such a low price?) 


an interface for Turbo Pascal*, so that 
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utilized with this fine compiler. (Turbo’s 
own built-in “windowing” procedure is 
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We decided to save you a lot of money. 
So, we left behind fancy binders, mono- 
grammed slip cases and plastic pre¬ 
sentation boxes. Instead, you’ll find an 
extremely powerful tool and a 200 page 
manual written with an eye toward 
simplicity, clarity and completeness. (We 

*Turbo Pascal is a Trademark of Borland International 


figured if you wanted ribbons and bows 
you could always add them yourself.) 

And by offering you the product our¬ 
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I The Window 
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Available for the IBM PC. XT. AT. IBM Compatibles, 
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The Window Machine Includes: 


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■ Zoom Windows 
i Multiple Virtual 
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» Choice of Borders 
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i Support for all Color and 
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(no graphics card required) 
Built-in Diagnostics 
m And much, much more 

ORDER YOUR COPY OF 

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LANGUAGE INTERFACE: 

□ Lattice C DRealia Cobol DMicrosoft Basic Compiler □ Microsoft Fortran 

□ PLl DMicrosoft Pascal GTurbo Pascal (full featured true windowing) 

COMPUTER_ 


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AMBER SYSTEMS, INC. 1171 S. Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road, San Jose CA 95129 


FOR DEALER INQUIRIES: CALL OUR 800 NUMBER 


Inquiry 18 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 129 














































THE MAC OFFICE 


colors are available. 

The Canon engine is used in the 
LaserWriter and many other new laser 
printers, from Hewlett-Packard's 
$3495 LaserJet to the $10,000 QMS 
800. These laser printers can turn out 
eight pages a minute and yet make 
only about as much noise as a copier. 
All of these machines can print at the 
same 300-dots-per-inch resolution. 
While far better than standard dot¬ 
matrix printers, they aren’t up to the 
1200 dots per inch or better that 
phototypesetters produce (see figures 
1 and 2 for samples of the Laser¬ 
Writer's output). Still, unless you're a 
graphics expert, it is hard to 
distinguish this resolution from 
typeset text. The difference between 
the various Canon-based laser 
printers is in the controllers; each 
manufacturer uses its own controlling 
computer. 

Because the laser scans synchro¬ 
nously across the page, image dots 
must be fed to the laser at exactly the 
right time. That requires data storage 
in the printer itself. Shipping data to 
the printer memory as a simple bit 
map would take too much time for 
most users. An RS-232C port running 


at 19,200 bps (bits per second) would 
take nearly 7 minutes to send the 
7,920,000 bits for a single page; even 
the speedier AppleTalk network 
would take half a minute. To ease that 
bottleneck, most manufacturers put 
some form of intelligence, such as en¬ 
coded graphics instructions and pre- 
loaded fonts, into the printer con¬ 
troller. Then the computer need only 
send a condensed form of the print 
image to the printer controller. 

The least intelligent controllers have 
limited printing capabilities. The 
Hewlett-Packard LaserJet, for instance, 
can only print 6 square inches of 
graphics per page and has a limited 
set of character fonts. On the other 
hand, the expensive QMS printer uses 
a standard Tektronix terminal emula¬ 
tion (a set of graphics protocols). For 
example, instead of sending a bit map 
of a circle to that printer, a computer 
only needs to send the Tektronix in¬ 
struction to print a circle of a certain 
size, shape, and position. 

LaserWriter Hardware 

The Apple LaserWriter printer can 
generate a variety of fonts and high- 
quality graphics with the help of a 


powerful built-in computer and the 
PostScript language. 

The LaserWriter's internal com¬ 
puter-controller board was designed 
by Burrell Smith, a key figure in the 
Macintosh design group, and is built 
around an 11.2-MHz 68000 processor, 
1.5 megabytes of RAM (random- 
access read/write memory), and 0.5 
megabyte of ROM (read-only mem¬ 
ory). The ROM contains the PostScript 
code. 

The laser-printer project's design 
goals were formed when Adobe Sys¬ 
tems suggested that a laser printer 
could offer graphics without giving up 
letter-quality text. Part of this involved 
making the printer controller as intel¬ 
ligent and as fast as possible, so that 
encoded information could be sent 
over the AppleTalk LAN to spare the 
network a huge overhead burden. 

Of the LaserWriter's 1.5 megabytes 
of RAM. half a megabyte is used for 
temporary scratch-pad buffers and 
font caching and a full megabyte is 
devoted to the screen. The Laser¬ 
Writer has other small memory com¬ 
ponents, such as a static RAM cache 
of 4K bytes that allows the 68000 to 
process faster by executing inner 
loops without any wait states. In ad¬ 
dition, Apple built into the hardware 
one of the most common input trans¬ 
fer modes. Burrell Smith said, "We do 
a classical OR between contents of 
memory and the data you wish to 
enter to the frame buffer—in a single 
bus cycle.'' 

Apple is a high-volume producer. To 
that end, it has kept the component 
count on the board low—there are 
only 34 chips plus memory and 
resistor packs. In comparison, one 
competing laser-printer controller 
board has close to 150 chips. The 
LaserWriter board has been designed, 
as was the Macintosh, for automatic 
insertion and test. The chip tech¬ 
nology used is generally the same as 
for the Macintosh: 2 5-nanosecond 
PAL (programmable-array logic) chips, 
2 56K-byte dynamic RAM chips, and 
2 56K-byte ROM chips. Smith noted. 
"What we're trying to do is take rela¬ 
tively expensive technologies and 

( continued ) 



130 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 


























is better. 


To get a lot out of a printer, you need a lot of 
programs, right? 

Wrong. 

True, your customers want to change type sizes, 
create their own characters, and even print sideways. 
But you don’t need to stock a lot of different 
printer utilities. One simple program will blow all 
the others right off your shelf. 

Printworks. It’s loaded. 


SoftStyle 


SoftStyle. Inc • 7192 Kalantanaole Hwy • Suite 205 
Honolulu. Hawaii 96825 • Phone (800) 367-5600 

$69.95 retail. SoftStyle products are distnbuted by Softsef and Ingram Software. 

Simple Menu Control • Pivot Printing ™ lets you print sideways quickly and easily • Prints full IBM character set including line graphics, math and science symbols * 
Foreign language characters • Easily set print modes: condensed, emphasized and more • Create new characters or entire fonts • Many fonts included • Supports 
thousands of popular software packages including Wordstar. dBase! I and Lotus 1 -2-3. 

Printworks enhances over 30 dot-matrix printers: C.ITOH Prowriter (8510 1550,7500 all with the letter “E” included in the model number), CENTRONICS Horizon 
(H80), EPSON (FX-80/100, RX-80/100 JX-80, LQ-1500, MX-80/100 III with Graftrax Plus), IBM Graphics Printer, iNFORUNNER Riteman (Plus, Blue Plus, It 15), 
NECPinwriter (P2-3, P3~3), OKIDATA (ML84 Step 2, ML 92 and 93 with or without Plug *n Play Kit, Pacemark 2350 and 2410), and STAR (Gemini 10X/15X, Radix 
10/15, Delta 10/15). For the IBM PC. PC-XT, PCjr., Compaq and many other IBM compatibles. Needs 128K and DOS 1.1 or later. 


Inquiry 284 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYT E 131 












































THE MAC OFFICE 


make them ourselves." 

Once the print image has been 
completely set in the RAM, the printer 
needs to ship it out to the laser ap¬ 
paratus as quickly as possible. That 
task is aided by the 68000, which 
helps drive the video electronics. The 
central processor stores the data in 
two FIFO (first-in/first-out) memories. 


That scheme allows a minimum 
amount of bus contention between 
the microprocessor and memory. 
Everything on the board is a slave to 
the 68000. That flexible architecture 
is expoited, for example, by the 
margins of the page to be printed. 
When the margins move inward, the 
frame buffer used for generating the 


bit map is actually reduced in size- 
allowing more RAM to cache the 
fonts. 

The Macintosh has nonvolatile pa¬ 
rameter memory that allows it to 
remember certain modifiable control 
settings between uses. Apple decided 
to further explore that scheme in the 
LaserWriter by putting in a 0.5K-byte 
EEPROM (electrically erasable pro¬ 
grammable ROM), which is expand¬ 
able to 2K bytes. As Smith points out, 
that is "equivalent to 16,000 DIP (dual¬ 
inline package) switches." 

The AppleTalk port isn't the only 
way to drive the LaserWriter. There is 
also a DB2 5 connector with complete¬ 
ly programmable RS-232C protocols. 
Adobe indicated that they and others 
would provide packages that will use 
translators or emulators to drive Tex, 
Ttoff, Scribe, and other mainframe- 
style composition systems. 

What sort of performance does the 
built-in computer offer for the Laser¬ 
Writer? According to Smith, when it 
is combined with perfect hardware, 
the printer is capable of turning out 
a page in 6 seconds. With the Apple 
controller, "We're expecting a 10-sec¬ 
ond average time per page," he says. 

Anything that can be put on the 
Macintosh screen can be printed by 
the LaserWriter. When you use the 
Printer Chooser desk accessory to 
select the LaserWriter printer instead 
of the ImageWriter, the Macintosh 
calls a new printer driver. On the 
Macintosh, all screen graphics are 
based on QuickDraw routines called 
from ROM. Bud Tfibble, the Macin¬ 
tosh software manager, says, "The 
LaserWriter's strategy is different than 
the ImageWriter's. Even though all the 
Macintosh's QuickDraw routines are 
in ROM, every entry point to Quick¬ 
Draw has a handle on it that allows 
us to trap out that call and go some¬ 
place else. That's what happens dur¬ 
ing printing to the LaserWriter driver. 
We trap out all the QuickDraw calls, 
and when that call comes along, the 
system translates it to the equivalent 
PostScript call, which ships it over 
AppleTalk to the laser printer and 
prints out." For now, the printer works 

( continued ) 




Each subject is a 3-tape series. The Basics will take you from the beginning and lead you through 
dBASE II commands. You will soon be creating your own databases, editing files, deleting records, etc. 
Application Programming will teach you program layouts, loops, structures and so much more. You 
will be writing your own programs within hours. 


dBASE 


#DB125 - THE BASICS 

#DB135 - APPLICATION 

PROGRAMMING 




Coming soon... 
dBASE III- 
WORDSTAR- 
MS-DOS- 
CP/M. 

LOTUS 123- 
MULTIPLAN- 

* MultiPlan and MS DOS are registered trademarks of Microsoft. 
Inc. CPM is a registered trademark ol Digital Research Wordstar 
is a registered trademark of Micro Pro. dBASE II and dBASE III are 
registered trademarks of Ashton Tate. Lotus 123 is a registered 
trademark of Lotus Corp 


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DB125 OR 
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From California 1-916-546-3371 



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Productions 

P.O. Box 2300 
8079 N. Lake Blud. 

Kings Beach, CA 95719 


132 B Y T E • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 329 































I wf m*m\ mm*\ 


1 Place orders 

2 Vieu or cancel open orders 

3 View confirwations and Messages 

4 Send Messages to Spear 

Enter itea nuaber or <H)elp 1 


Trade over 
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Inquiry 294 FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 133 









































Picture a computer under 11000 
that can run Lotus 1-2-3. 










To run a powerful program, you need 
a powerful computer. But "powerful 
doesn't always 
have to mean 
expensive. 

Case in 
point: PCjr, 
from IBM. 

With its 
128 KB memory, 


And for all of its power, it costs less 
than $1,000.* without monitor. 


“But I already have Lotus ”1-2-3 on diskette.” 

If that's the case, you may not want to buy the cartridge version. All 
you need is a PCjr Installation kit (available free where you bought 1-2-3) 
and the new 128KB PCjr Memory Expansion Attachment. 

This doubles PCjr's memory. And. by no coincidence, it also doubles the 
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Growing by leaps and bounds. 


Inquiry 143 


Before or after you buy a PCjr, it’s easy to get answers 
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*IBM Product Center price, monitor not included. 

Lotus and 1-2-3 are trademarks of Lotus Development Corp. 
Little Tramp character licensed by Bubbles Inc., s.a. 











A program to take 
the tedium out of converting 
C programs to Pascal 


138 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


ILLUSTRATED BY WILLIAM LOW 





BY TtD CARNEVALE 


o matter how much you 
prefer a particular pro¬ 
gramming language, there 
are times when it is neces¬ 
sary to use a different one. I found 
myself in this situation recently after 
I had written a graphics subroutine 
library in C for the Pixeltronics high- 
resolution graphics display board that 
uses the NEC 7220 GDC (graphics dis¬ 
play controller) chip. Since the display 
was attractive, I decided to incor¬ 
porate the routines into our lab's high¬ 
speed data-acquisition system. 

The data-acquisition program, 
which controlled A/D (analog-to- 
digital) conversion and signal averag¬ 
ing, was compiled with Digital Re¬ 
search's Pascal/MT+ compiler. I chose 
this implementation of Pascal 
because it supports floating-point 
operations using the AMD (Advanced 
Micro Devices) 9511 A. a high-per¬ 
formance arithmetic coprocessor that 
allows faster on-line data averaging 
and scaling, lb run the A/D converter 
at top speed, special drivers were 
written in assembly language. The 
package's weak link was its subroutine 
to display data on a nonstorage 
oscilloscope, using the D/A (digital-to- 
analog) section of the converter 
board. The time required to sweep 
multiple traces across the oscil¬ 
loscope screen limited the maximum 
rate of data acquisition. 

It didn't seem practical to rewrite all 
of the data conversion software in C 
just to use the graphics display. Fur¬ 
thermore, we would have to write new 
drivers to use the AMD 9511A for 
floating-point calculations in C. Worse 
yet, the floating-point format and 


dynamic range of the AMD 9511A are 
radically different from their counter¬ 
parts in our version of C (Software 
Toolworks C80 with optional floats 
and longs). 

For a while I considered linking the 
rel (relocatable) files produced by C80 
(which contain the graphics routines) 
to the erl (extended relocatable) files 
generated by Pascal/MT-i- (which con¬ 
tain the data-conversion routines). 
This proved to be especially cumber¬ 
some for two reasons. 

First, both of these languages use 
the stack to pass parameters to sub¬ 
routines. Pascal/MT-i- assumes that 
the subroutine will pop the param¬ 
eters from the stack, which has the 
side effect of restoring the stack 
pointer to its position before the sub¬ 
routine call. However, C80 expects the 
calling program to restore the stack 
pointer. Therefore, repeated calls 
from a Pascal program to C subrou¬ 
tines would make the stack grow 
larger and larger, potentially over¬ 
writing vital regions of memory. Cir¬ 
cumventing this problem requires the 
crude but effective dodge of inserting 
a special "unstack'' routine after each 
C routine call, so that the stack 
pointer would be properly restored. 

The second problem is more diffi¬ 
cult to deal with and relates to the fact 
that Pascal lacks local static variables. 
LIN KMT, the linker for Pascal/ MT+, 
issues error messages when it en¬ 
counters certain conditions in the 
data segment. Some of my graphics 
procedures used local static variables, 
and these modules could not be pro¬ 
cessed by LIN KMT. 

In theory this can be overcome by 


using LIBMT to convert the Pascal erl 
files to rel files and then linking them 
to the C80 rel files with Microsoft's 
L80. But somehow I could never get 
this technique to work right. Even if 
L80 could have produced a function¬ 
ing mongrel, it would have been need¬ 
lessly bulky, since the graphics drivers 
would have their own arithmetic and 
logic routines extracted from the C 
library with much needless duplica¬ 
tion of similar functions provided by 
the Pascal library. Still, if it had worked 
I would have used it. 

Having failed to weld C routines to 
Pascal, I had to rewrite the graphics 
drivers in Pascal. At first this seemed 
less awful than it really was. There are 
enough similarities between these 
two descendants of ALGOL that 
major revisions are not necessary for 
most simple routines. Many of the re¬ 
quired changes can be done with any 
editor using global search/replace 
commands. For example, C's block 
delimiters { and } are direct counter¬ 
parts of Pascal's begin and end. 

This method is fine if you only have 
to translate a few short programs, but 
it has some major problems other¬ 
wise. Suppose you accidentally re¬ 
place the C comment delimiters /* 
and 7 with { and } before replacing 
the block delimiters with begin and 
end? And how about the different 
uses of = in C and Pascal? If you re¬ 
place each = with :=, then C's 

( continued) 

led Carnevale is an assistant professor of 
neurology at the State University of New York 
at Stony Brook. He can be reached in care 
of the Neurology Dept., SUNY, Stony Brook. 
NY 11794. 



FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 139 



C TO PASCAL 


Listing 1: The C-to-Pascal program, written for the Software Toolworks C80 compiler. 

I* C to Pascal — filter to replace C punctuation and certain key words with 
their Pascal equivalents. 

C form Pascal form 


{ 

} 

<tab> 

0 

&& 

11 

comment start 
comment end 


BEGIN 

END; 

<2 blank spaces > 
< nothing > 

AND 

OR 

{ 

} 


< > 


printf writeln 

scant readln 

while WHILE 

Usage: ctp < infile > outfile 
V 


#define EOF -1 
#define EOS \0’ 


main () 

{ 

char c,'letter,word[100]; 
int wordlnth; 


letter = word; 
wordlnth = 0; 

while ((c = getchar()) ! = EOF) { 

if (isalpha(c)) letter[wordlnth + + ] = c; 
else { 

if (wordlnth >0) { 

letter[wordlnth] = ‘\0’; 
wtest(word); 
wordlnth = 0; 

} 

ctest(c); 

} 


I* word ready to check */ 

/* pass or replace it *1 
I* reset index */ 

I* process following char */ 


} I* note: the last word in the file will be missed if it is immediately followed 

by EOF with no intervening nonalphanumeric character. This is not a problem for 
Pascal or C program sources. However, a general-purpose word filter would have 
to check for a nonzero wordlength after EOF is reached. */ 


wtest(word) 
char *word; 

{ 

char * swapword; 
swapword = word; 

switch (word[0]) { /* test first letter, then rest of word */ 

case ‘p’: if (strcmp(word,‘‘printf\0”) = =0) swapword =‘‘writeln\0”; 
break; 

case ‘s’: if (strcmp(word,“scanf\0”)= =0) swapword = “readln\0”; 
break 

case ‘w’: if (strcmp(word,"while\0”) = =0) swapword = ‘‘WHILE\0”; 
break; 

default: break; /* pass unchanged */ 

( continued ) 


The C functions printf 
and scanf could be 
replaced by writeln 
and readln. 


equality test == becomes : = 

<= turns into <:=, and > = 
becomes >: = . 

You could step manually through 
the file, verifying all replacements one 
at a time, and this might not take too 
long if you have excellent eye-hand 
coordination. If you're really good, 
you might catch most of the errors 
before your compiler does. However, 

I wouldn’t even attempt it. I was faced 
with the task of editing 27 separate 
files, totaling about 30 pages of 
drivers and test programs to convert 
from C to Pascal. After manually 
translating three of these to Pascal, I 
decided to write a "filter" that would 
do as much of the dirty work as 
possible. 

The first step in developing this C 
program, called CTPC (see listing 1), 
was identifying what substitutions 
could by made easily, reasonably, and 
safely by an unsupervised, i.e., non¬ 
interactive, program. The C functions 
printf and scanf could be replaced by 
writeln and readln. Where necessary, 
the In suffixes can be deleted manual¬ 
ly at the same time the argument lists 
are revised. 

The only other word substitution 
that I made was to capitalize WHILE. 
It is a trivial matter to change the pro¬ 
gram to perform case substitutions on 
other words (e.g., for or if). You will 
also want to replace switch with case 
and delete any case that appears in 
the C source. In addition to the block 
and comment delimiters, the non¬ 
alphanumeric characters that I de¬ 
cided to replace included tab (re¬ 
placed with two spaces, my own for¬ 
mat preference for Pascal), double 
quote, empty pairs of parentheses, 
logical "and" (&&), logical "or" (!!), and 
the various uses of = . 

( continued ) 


140 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 












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FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 141 





C TO PASCAL 


} 

swap(swapword); 

} 

ctest(c) 
char c; 

{ 

switch (c) { 

case putchar(‘\’ ’); 

break; 

case swap(“BEGIN\0’’); 

break; 

case ■}’: swap(“END;\0”); 
break; 

case \t’: swap(“ \0”); 
break; 

case ■&’: swapif(‘&\ AND \0“); 
break; 

case T; swapif(T, ’I’,“OR 0“); 
break; 

case swapif(‘(\ i )\ , \0 ,> ), /* () simply deleted 7 

break; 

case 7’: swapif(7\ ‘{\0'’); 
break; 

case swapiff*’, 7 , ,“}\0”); 

break; 

case*!’: swapif(‘!’, ' = >\0“); /* != -><>*/ 

break; 

case < : 

case putchar(c); /* <x and >x are passed unchanged V 

c = getchar(); 
putchar(c); 
break; 

case‘ = ’: identassign(); /*= = - > = ,= ->;=*/ 

break; 

default: purchar(c); 

break; 

} 

} 

swap(s) 
char *s; 

{ 

while (*s! = EOS) putchar(*s+ +); 

} 

swapif(first,second, replacement) 
char first,second,‘replacement; 

{ 

char c; 

if ((c = getchar()) = = second) swap(replacement); 

else { 

putchar(first); 

putchar(c); 

} 

} 

identassign() 

{ 

char c; 

if ((c = getchar())! = =’) { /* assignment 7 

putchar(‘:’); 
putchar(‘ = ’); 

j 

putchar(c)’ 

} 


The next question was how to per¬ 
form the substitutions. I decided the 
program should read through the file 
one character at a time, building 
words and testing them one at a time, 
while checking nonalphanumeric 
characters for any necessary replace¬ 
ments. For my purposes. 1 defined a 
word as a string of alphanumeric char¬ 
acters bounded by nonalphanumeric 
characters (including underline and 
numerals). This convention places 
restrictions on the labels that can be 
used in a program. For instance, 
printfl would change into writelnl, 

and new_scant would become 

new_readln. If you use reasonable 

prudence in choosing names, you will 
avoid such undesired side effects. 

An array of type char is used for 
temporary storage of each word. This 
array is arbitrarily much longer than 
any variable, function, or constant 
label that I am ever likely to use. 
Words are built one character at a 
time, starting with the first alpha¬ 
numeric character encountered. The 
appearance of a nonalphanumeric 
character signals the end of each 
word. An index variable keeps track 
of the length of the word, and a 
pointer indicates the location for the 
next character. 

When a nonalphanumeric character 
is found, the length of the word is ex¬ 
amined. If the word length is nonzero, 
the program branches to a string com¬ 
parison and conditional replacement 
routine. This routine handles each 
word in a similar fashion. It seemed 
easiest to use C80 s strcmp (string 
compare) function to identify replace¬ 
able words. This function is not dif¬ 
ficult to simulate if it is lacking from 
any particular C implementation. 

Nonalphanumeric characters are 
treated in a somewhat different man¬ 
ner. Some, like tab or ”, are simply re¬ 
placed directly. Others, like / or &. are 
replaced only if followed by a second 
character such as * or another &. re¬ 
spectively. The various = constructs 
are all handled differently. 

For the sake of convenience, I used 
a UNIX-like command-line specifica¬ 
tion for input and output filenames. 

( continued ) 


142 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 







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C TO PASCAL 


Listing 2: S ample output of the CTP.C program . a partial processing of the 
program's own source file. 

#define EOF -1 
#define EOS \0’ 

main 

BEGIN 

char c,*letter,word[100]; 
int wordlnth; 

letter: = word; 
wordlnth: = 0; 

WHILE ((c: = getchar) < > EOF) BEGIN 
if (isalpha(c)) letter[wordlnth + + ]: = c; 
else BEGIN 

if (wordlnth>0) BEGIN { word ready to check } 
letter[wordlnth]: = \0’; 
wtest(word); { pass or replace it } 
wordlnth: * 0; { reset index } 

END; 

ctest(c); { process following char } 

END; 

END; 

END; 


The typical command line reads 
CTP <INFILE.XXX >OUTFILE.YYY 

Listing 1 is my current version of 
CTP.C. Listing 2 is part of the file 
CTP PAS produced by using CTP to 
process itself. 

This filter program was designed to 
perform simple substitutions. It 
passes #define, #ifdef. and include 
statements unchanged. It does not 
label functions or procedures, 
generate type definitions, reorganize 
variable declarations, or perform 
other radical alterations. Nor does it 
eliminate the need for program re¬ 
structuring to compensate for major 
differences between C and Pascal (the 
lack of local static variables in Pascal 
being one of the more annoying prob¬ 
lems). However, it does remove most 
of the error-prone aspects of building 
a Pascal program on the framework 
of a C program. ■ 


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by Don Stauffer 


SIMULATE A 

SERVO 

SYSTEM 


Letting the computer 
handle the math eases the designer’s job 


A servo mechanism is essentially a small motor that controls a larger motor. 
A servo-control system consists of the logical instructions needed to guide 
the servo mechanism. Control systems were brought out of the laboratory 
and into practical use about the time guided missiles were developed for 
World War II. The original vacuum-tube type was big, heavy, and expen¬ 
sive. but integrated-circuit (IC) technology has reduced the size of control- 
system technology as well as others. Now, almost the entire servo-control 
electronics package fits into a single IC. as in present model-airplane radio- 
controlled servos. Consequently, the cost of these systems has been re¬ 
duced so that they are now found in automobile cruise-control systems, 
stereo turntables and tape decks, kitchen appliances, and home-workshop 
tools. 

A reduction in the size and cost of servo-control systems, however, has 
not reduced their complexity. The design of servo-control systems remains 
one of the most intricate of the electrical engineering sciences. However, 
the computer's simulation ability has simplified the designer's job. Simula¬ 
tion is now a common part of the servo-control system engineer's tool kit, 
and similar simulation, though not as complex, can be effected with home 
computers. 

As an example, let's design an electronic weighing scale. Figure 1 is an 
illustration of how such a scale would be arranged. A balance beam forms 
the main part of the scale, along with the weight pan on the left. On the 
right side, instead of the normal balance weights, we attach a solenoid. 
The solenoid is designed so that the pull on the solenoid armature is directly 
proportional to the current in the coil. A sensor, such as a low- {continued} 


Don Stauffer is a senior research scientist at Honeywell Systems and Research who 
went from building model airplanes from balsa wood to modeling advanced avionics systems 
on computers. He can be reached at 6741-1 57th lane NW, Anoka, MN 55303. 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 


147 









SERVO SYSTEM 


friction potentiometer, forms an error 
detector that gives a voltage propor¬ 
tional to the angle by which the scale 
is out of balance. The servo-control 
system uses this error signal to 
change the current through the sole¬ 
noid to eliminate the imbalance. The 
current in the solenoid coil is now pro¬ 
portional to the weight in the pan. and 
a current meter is calibrated to read 
in weight units. 

Figure 2 is the type of diagram a 
designer would draw for this kind of 
feedback servo-control system. The 
circle at the left represents a summing 
junction. The output to the right of the 
junction is the sum of the inputs to the 
other two (or three) quadrants. As 
shown here, the junction indicates the 
difference between the commanded 
or desired quantity. Q c . and the actual 
quantity, Q. The servo-control com¬ 
puter operates on this difference and 
outputs a voltage to the actuator. The 
actuator is a physical device, usually 
a force transducer that drives the 


quantity to be controlled either up or 
down so that the actual value equals 
the desired value. At this point the 
system is balanced, and the error 
signal (or feedback) will remain at 
zero unless some perturbing force 
displaces the system or a new input 
value is commanded. 

A servo-control designer is con¬ 
cerned with several aspects of the sys¬ 
tem's behavior. First and foremost is 
stability. That is. does the system in¬ 
deed act to reduce the error, and not. 
as servo-control systems have a habit 
of doing, actually cause the error to 
increase wildly? How soon will the 
system reach a new equilibrium? If it 
takes too long to settle down, the sys¬ 
tem may not be usable in practice. Is 
the amount of error that remains after 
the system reaches a new equilibrium 
sufficiently small? Ideally, you'll have 
no error but in practice you'll prob¬ 
ably have some and will have to 
decide if it is tolerable. 

Without simulation you have to use 


complicated differential equations to 
try to predict a mechanism's behavior. 
Computer-based simulation does the 
math for you. In addition, simulation 
lets you design more complex servos, 
whose behavior could not be pre¬ 
dicted easily by normal differential 
equation methods. Figure 3 charts a 
typical simulation. After setting the 
initial conditions, the program enters 
the iterative loop (input, model, out¬ 
put. update). It scans user or process 
input to see if conditions are to be 
changed. If the simulation is sup¬ 
posed to be continuous, such as the 
physical simulation we will be work¬ 
ing with, input is best done with a 
keyboard-monitoring routine to keep 
the program running between inputs. 
The heart of the simulation is the next 
step—the math model. In this block, 
the computer performs its mathe¬ 
matical operations on the equation 
that describes the system being 
simulated. Almost any system or 

( continued ) 



commanded and actual values of some quantity and uses a function of that difference 
to drive an error-reducing actuator. 


Figure 3: A typical simulation-program 
flowchart. 


148 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 



















































































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SERVO SYSTEM 


situation that can be mathematically 
described in a cause-and-effect rela¬ 
tionship can be simulated by a com¬ 
puter. Next, the program displays or 
prints an output. Then the time vari¬ 


able is incremented and. if the pro¬ 
gram is not terminated by some con¬ 
dition that exceeds its limits, the pro¬ 
gram repeats. 

( continued ) 


Listing 1: This program is written in TRS-80 Level II BASIC hut can be adapted 
to any of the BASIC dialects. 


50 PR = 0 

REM 

60 TH = 0 

REM 

70 TM = 0 

REM 

80 W = 0 

REM 

90 JS = 5 

REM 

100 D = 5 

REM 

110 K= 10 

REM 


120 K1 = -0.4 
130 K2 = 0 
140 K3 = 0 
150 DT = 0.2 
160 T = 0 
170 ST = 0 


10 REM SCALE SERVO CONTROLLER 
20 REM by Don Stauffer 
30 CLEAR 200 

40 REM EDIT ASSIGNMENT STATEMENTS TO ALTER CONTROL CONSTANTS 
PRINT CONTROL VARIABLE 
SCALE BALANCE BEAM ANGLE 
BEAM ANGLE DURING LAST ITERATION 
INITIAL WEIGHT IN PAN 
BEAM MOMENT OF INERTIA 
DISTANCE FROM PIVOT TO WEIGHT OR SOLENOID 
SCALE FACTOR, SOLENOID CURRENT TO FORCE 
: REM PROPORTIONAL SERVO CONSTANT 
REM RATE SERVO CONSTANT 
REM LAG SERVO CONSTANT 
REM TIME INCREMENT 
REM INITIAL TIME 
REM STOP PARAMETER 
180 REM BEGIN SIMULATION LOOP 
190 IF PR > 1.5 GOSUB 5000 
200 REM CHECK FOR INPUT 
210 GOSUB 1000 

220 REM COMPUTE CONTROL FORCE 

230 GOSUB 2000 

240 REM COMPUTE MOTION 

250 GOSUB 3000 

260 REM DISPLAY AND PRINT OUTPUT 

270 GOSUB 4000 

280 REM UPDATE TIME 

290 T = T + DT 

300 IF ST<0.5 THEN 200 

310 STOP 

1000 'CHECK FOR INPUT 

1010 IF PEEK(14400)= 128 THEN GOTO 1010 

1020 IF PEEK(14340) = 8 THEN ST=1 

1030 IF PEEK(14340)< >128 THEN RETURN 

1040 PRINT@65,“ 

1050 INPUT “CHANGE WEIGHT”;W 
1060 IF W<0 THEN W = 0 
1070 RETURN 

2000 REM COMPUTE CONTROL CURRENT 
2010 ER = TH 

2020 IF ER< -10 THEN ER = -10 ELSE IF ER>10.0 ER = 10.0 
2030 I = K2*(TH -TM)/DT + K1 *ER + K3*(ER + EM) 

2040 EM = ER 
2050 RETURN 
3000 TM =TH 
3010 J = JS + W*D[2 
3020 F = K*I 
3030 LC = F * D 
3040 LW = W * D 
3050 AA = (LC - LW)/J 
3060 WD = WD +AA*DT 

3070 TH = TH+WD*DT # , 

(continued) 


150 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 


































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Inquiry 249 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 151 















SERVO SYSTEM 



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3080 IF TH< -10 THEN TH- -10 ELSE IF TH>10 THEN TH = 10 
3090 RETURN 
4000 CLS 

4010 PRINT“ACTUAL WEIGHT = ”;W 

4020 PRINT@384,“TIME","ANGLE",“CURRENT”,"WEIGHT” 

4030 PRINT@448T.TH,I,F 
4040 IF PR <0.5 THEN RETURN 
4045 IF PR> 1.5 GOTO 4080 
4050 LPRINT T,W 
4060 LPRINT AA,WD,TH,F 
4070 RETURN 

4080 NF = T:NI = INT(NF): RX = NF-NI 

4090 IF (RX<DT) THEN LPRINT CHR$(51); ELSE LPRINT CHR$(54); 

4100 PP = 10*F:IF PP<2 THEN PP = 2 

4110 IF PP> 134 THEN PP=134 

4120 IF PP = 134 THEN CH = 74 ELSE CH = 47 

4130 NS = PP — 2:IF NS<0 THEN NS = 0 

4135 FOR NZ = 1 TO NS:LPRINT CHR$(88);:NEXT 

4140 LPRINT SP$;CHR$(CH) 

4150 RETURN 

5000 LPRINT CHR$(27)CHR$(81):LPRINT CHR$(27)CHR$(84);"12“ 

5010 LPRINT CHR$(27)CHR$(35) 

5020 FOR N-1 TO 135 

5030 NF = N/10:NI = INT(NF):RX = NF- Nl 

5040 IF (RX< 1E - 2) THEN LRPINT CHR$(49); ELSE LPRINT CHR$(53); 

5050 NEXT N 

5055 LPRINT CHR$(10) 

5060 RETURN 


The program shown in listing 1 
follows this flowchart closely. The pro¬ 
gram is written in TRS-80 Level II 
BASIC but I have attempted to use as 
few nonstandard instructions as possi¬ 
ble. You can adapt this program to 
any of the BASIC dialects (see the text 
box "Program Changes” on page 153, 
for more information). Lines 50-170 
set the physical constants' values and 
give initial values to variables. The 
stop variable ST (in line 170) is used 
to terminate the program upon com¬ 
mand. The program must be edited 
to change the values of any of the 
constants except weight, which can be 
changed by the operator. PR is a vari¬ 
able printout control. PR = 0 results 
in no hard copy PR = 1 gives you a 
tabular list of the variables shown on 
the screen, and PR = 2 gives a graphic 
trace of the indicated weight. Line 
5000, referenced if PR >1.5, is used 
to set up the scale of the printer and 
to print an axis. 

Line 200 is where the main loop 
begins. Line 1000 looks for a user in¬ 
put. If you press the W key, the pro¬ 
gram stops and expects a new value 
for the weight on the pan. The S key 


and the space bar also have functions, 
which I'll describe later. The sub¬ 
routine starting on line 2000 is the 
math model of the control computer 
block in figure 2. We will be able to 
understand this block better after we 
begin to play with the servo simula¬ 
tion. The subroutine that begins at 
line 3000 is also part of the math 
model and represents the physics of 
our scale. It represents Newton's sec¬ 
ond law of motion as applied to 
rotating systems. (The text box 
"Physics Math Model” on page 153 
has more details about the mathe¬ 
matical model of our scale.) The force 
applied to the solenoid equals the 
current after it is multiplied by a scale 
factor (line 3020). Tbrque is equal to 
the product of a force (F) multiplied 
by a distance (D), so the torque in the 
beam is equal to the product of F 
multiplied by D (line 3030). Assume 
that the distance from the pivot to the 
weight is the same as that from the 
pivot to the solenoid, so line 3040 cal¬ 
culates the torque due to the weight. 
Therefore, line 3050 determines the 
angular acceleration by finding the 
net difference between the torque 


152 BYT E • FEBRUARY 1985 










SERVO SYSTEM 


due to the weight and the torque due 
to the solenoid current, and then that 
net difference is divided by the mo¬ 
ment of inertia. Lines 3050 and 3060 
integrate the acceleration to angular 
velocity and angle. 

The subroutine starting at line 4000 
displays the output on the screen. The 
program displays elapsed time, the 
deflection angle, the solenoid current, 
and the indicated weight. For refer¬ 
ence, the actual weight is also dis¬ 
played in the upper left corner. If a 
hard copy is desired (PR equal to or 
greater than 1), the print routine con¬ 
tinues. Lines 4050-4070 output the 
table, and the graphic output is begun 
by the command at line 4080. The 
table output routine slows down ex¬ 
ecution considerably, so don't use it 
unless you find an interesting case. If 
you don't want a hard copy, the sub¬ 
routine returns to the main program. 
If you haven't set the stop variable, the 
program loops back to line 200 and 
continues. 

The subroutine starting at line 5000 
scales the characters per inch in both 
directions and draws an axis. In opera¬ 
tion, the graph is drawn vertically 
down the paper. (The values given are 
those needed with a C. Itoh ProWriter.) 
Other printers will require different 
values in lines 5000 and 5010. Line 
5000 puts the ProWriter in condensed 
(17 characters per inch) mode and 
sets the vertical feed to 12 lines per 
inch. You can set these values to any 
you like. Line 5010 puts the printer 
into the graphics mode. Be fore¬ 
warned: The program does not take 
the printer out of the graphics mode. 
You have to do it manually. 

You usually start the program with 
no weight on the pan (W = 0). Press¬ 
ing the W key for about one second 
stops the problem and the computer 
will prompt you for the value of 
weight you want to add. The scale will 
work well with any weight less than 10 
units. Other keys include the S key, 
which will stop the program (you can 
also hit the Break key) and the space 
bar, which freezes the operation for 
as long as you hold it down. You have 
to edit the program to alter the servo- 
control constants, the physical param¬ 


eters of the scale, or the printout com¬ 
mand. I recommend that you avoid 
printing anything until you have a 
setup you really want to document. 
The printer slows down the simula¬ 
tion. especially when you call for 
graphics. In fact, while the computer 
is executing the subroutine that does 
the scaling (line 5000), expect a 


lengthy pause. After several seconds 
the normal screen and simulation will 
appear. 

Servo Theory 

After typing in the program with the 
values given in listing 1, go ahead and 
run it to see that it works. Don't worry 

(continued) 


Program Changes 


T he BASIC I used in this program 
is Radio Shack Level II BASIC, but 
you can easily convert the program to 
other computers. I minimized com¬ 
mands unique to the Level II inter¬ 
preter. The CLEAR command in line 
30 clears for string space and is 
needed only for the graphic print op¬ 
tion. The keyboard-scanning routine in 
lines 1010 to 1030 checks the keyboard 
for depressed keys. Using a normal IN¬ 
PUT statement would stop the pro¬ 
gram once every iteration, while we 
want the program to continue. The 
PEEKs look at the memory area of the 
memory-mapped TRS-80 keyboard. 
The Apple should use the same tech¬ 
nique, although the memory locations 
will be different. Line 1010 looks for the 
space bar and freezes the program for 
as long as that key is depressed. Line 
1020 looks for the S key. Line 1030 
looks for the W key. For the Com¬ 


modore 64 use the GET command. 

The other main thing to watch for is 
the manner in which an output is sent 
to a line printer. If no printer is used, 
PR in line 50 will always be set to zero, 
and no changes are required. If a 
printer is used with another computer, 
however, modifications must be made. 
The TRS-80 merely uses the command 
LPRINT followed by the desired out¬ 
puts. as in line 4050. For Apples, 
change all LPRINTs to PRINTs, 
precede each one with a PR#1, and 
follow it with a PR#0. For the Com¬ 
modore 64, you must use the OPEN 
command before each output to the 
printer, followed by an OPEN 1,3 to 
return the output to the screen. 

The other area of the program you 
may need to modify contains the 
graphics commands to printers other 
than the ProWriter. These parameters 
are discussed in the main text. 


Physics Math Model 


T he code in lines 3000-3090 is a 
mathematical model of the 
physics of our scale. The scale operates 
according to Newton's second law of 
motion, but it is expressed in a form 
for angular motion, which may make 
it seem a little unfamiliar. Newton's sec¬ 
ond law is ordinarily expressed as: 
F=MA. For rotary or angular motion, 
however, it is expressed as: AA = L/J, 
where AA is the angular acceleration 
(degrees per second squared). L is the 
net torque (difference between the 
torques in opposite direction), and I is 
the moment of inertia. Moment of in¬ 
ertia is the resistance to a change in 
rotation and is the rotary equivalent of 
mass. The moment of inertia is a func¬ 


tion of the beam’s structure and of the 
weight added to the pan (line 3010). 
Tbrque equals force times distance. For 
our scale, we assume that the distance 
between the weight and the pivot is the 
same as the distance between the pivot 
and the point where the solenoid ap¬ 
plies its force. Thus, line 3030 repre¬ 
sents the torque generated by the sole¬ 
noid. while 3040 represents the torque 
from the applied weight. Line 3050 cal¬ 
culates the angular acceleration. Line 
3060 integrates the acceleration to find 
the angular velocity: 3070 integrates 
once more to find the angle. Line 3080 
represents mechanical stops that pre¬ 
vent the beam from rotating more than 
10 degrees in either direction. 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 153 












t- in flMj® 

■ i -Jn (inn/ 

O nr iwi 1 

„,.» t- nn ann 

e iW# 


S C >C nf)P 

m 1 
•,-m 
nr» 




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IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation. 
MS DOS is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. 




















































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=^= SPERRY 

Inquiry 354 














SERVO SYSTEM 


about making sense out of the simula¬ 
tion yet. Before we do any experi¬ 
ments, let's look at some elementary 
servo theory. Figure 4 shows the most 


simple form of servo controller. This 
is known among servo designers as 
a proportional control system. The 
controller merely takes the error 


signal (Q c -Q) and multiplies it by a 
constant, known as the "gain con¬ 
stant." In our example, we want the 
angle of the scale to be zero. Thus, the 
commanded value of O (Q e ) will 
always be zero, and our error is always 
equal to -O, where O is the scale's 
actual angle. The output signal to the 
actuator and, as mentioned previous¬ 
ly, the restoring force on the scale are 
proportional to the error. 

Now consider for a moment how 
you want your scale to act. Obvious¬ 
ly the weight readout should be close 
to the actual weight in the pan. There 
are other desirable features, too. 
Beam balances seem to take forever 
to settle down and show whether they 
are indeed in balance. Electronic 
scales can also exhibit such oscilla¬ 
tions, so we would like ours to settle 
down quickly. Additionally if the scale 
comes to rest with the beam not level, 
there may be an inaccuracy. With 
these three criteria, let's run the pro¬ 
gram with the initial values from listing 
1 and see how the scale performs. 

As we start out, the scale is in 
balance and everything stays at rest 
with the scale at zero angle. Now 
press the W key until you see the 
prompt for weight. Type in a value, 
such as 5.0. This adds 5 ounces to the 
scale. The scale is now out of balance, 
and the beam swings to a negative 
angle. The control system senses this 
angular error and increases the 
solenoid current. This attracts the 
beam and slows it down. Now the 
current-generated force exceeds the 
weight, and the beam's angle moves 
back toward zero. When this happens, 
the solenoid shuts off the current and 
the cycle repeats. We have built a 
good oscillator. Our simulation will 
continue to oscillate like this forever. 
Figure 5 is a plot of a cycle of this con¬ 
dition. Stop the program now, as it is 
neither exciting nor instructive 
beyond this point. Pivot friction in an 
actual scale would eventually reduce 
these oscillations. However, it would 
take a long time and its effect would 
be small in a well-built scale. Conse¬ 
quently, I left friction out of my simula¬ 
tion model. Playing with the value of 
K 1 will affect the period of the oscilla- 



Figure 4:1 n a proportional control system, the error between the actual and the 
commanded value is multiplied by a gain constant to drive the actuator. 



Figure 5: Continuous oscillation is a common feature of a proportional control system 
with no damping. 



Figure 6: A proportional-plus-rate system uses the output variable's rate of change as 
part of the control calculation. 


156 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 






















































SERVO SYSTEM 


tion but won't eliminate it. 

The way the servo designer elimi¬ 
nates eternal oscillation is to add 
"rate damping" to the system. Figure 
6 shows a proportional-plus-rate sys¬ 
tem. The symbol O with a dot over it 
(pronounced "Q dot”) represents O’s 
rate of change over time. Again, O is 
our controlled variable, the angle of 
the scale. In calculus, this is the time 
derivative. We add rate damping to 
our system by setting K2 to some non¬ 


zero value. Tty a value of -4 in line 
130 and run the program again. 
Figure 7 shows a typical result. Now 
we have reduced most of the oscilla¬ 
tion. although a small amount of ex¬ 
cess motion remains. The excess mo¬ 
tion eventually stops, but the speed 
at which it stops is sluggish. The scale 
could almost be considered practical 
now. However, in addition to the slug¬ 
gish response and the excess motion, 

( continued ) 



Figure 7: The addition of rate-of-change feedback creates a damped oscillation. 



Figure 8: The addition of a quantity proportional to the integral of the controlled 
quantity reduces error when the system reaches equilibrium. 


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FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 157 




































































SERVO SYSTEM 



Figure 9: The integral partially offsets the effect of rate damping so you get quicker 
response and some overshoot, which is quickly damped out. You can't see the reduction 
of the weight beams angular error in this plot of indicated weight versus time, but 
including the integral O increases the scale's accuracy. 


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we have another problem. As the sys¬ 
tem approaches equilibrium, we still 
have an angle error of about 1 degree. 
This is not drastic, but we can do 
much better. 

Specifically, we will add yet another 
block to the system (shown in figure 
8) and create a proportional-plus-rate- 
plus-integral, or proportional-plus- 
rate-plus-lag, system. Although this is 
beginning to look like a formidable 
circuit, don't be dismayed. This is as 
complicated as it gets. We can create 
a proportional-plus-rate-plus-lag servo 
by changing K3 to a nonzero value. 
Try a -3 for K3 in line 140 and run 
the system again. We've speeded up 
the response and increased the ex¬ 
cess motion. But as the system damps 
out, we see that a greatly reduced 
angle is obtained. Since an increase 
in K2 reduced the excess motion 
before, let's try increasing it again, this 
time to -8. Now that's more like it. 
Although there is still some excess 
motion, it quickly stops (see figure 9). 


The reading reaches equilibrium in a 
few seconds, and the angular error is 
less than one-tenth of a degree. You 
can improve your results even more 
by further refining K2 and K3. We 
have now designed a practical servo- 
controlled scale that is stable and 
becomes quiescent with reasonable 
speed. Play around with the system. 
As with any computer simulation, you 
can't hurt anything. If you want to see 
things really go awry, try putting in a 
value for any of the three servo con¬ 
stants with the opposite sign. 

This simplified simulation illustrates 
much of the behavior of the typical 
servo system. You can easily modify 
the program to represent a speed- 
control servo (e.g., an automobile's 
cruise control). The professional engi¬ 
neer must still dabble in the realms 
of complex variables, nonlinear dif¬ 
ferential equations, and other forms 
of higher math, but simulations 
similar to this one are revolutionizing 
the design of servo systems. ■ 


158 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 










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FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 159 














































We Just Made Oui 
Terminals Look Even 



US. COMPUTER SITES 

. •>» cap 50 U& Con ***m Marom - 







est Selling Graphics 


etter. 


NEVER BEFORE HAVE DEC the ANSI X3.64 standard 
COMPATIBILITY AND GRAPHICS Never before have such features and 

BEEN SEEN AT A PRICE THIS LOW. graphic resolution been seen at this price 



At $1395, the Visual 102G is the only 
DEC" compatible terminal with Tektronix 
compatible graphics at a price this low. 

The 102G actually outperforms the 
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with power and features emulating the 
Tektronix 4010/4014.'” And it's fully 
compatible with the DEC VT102.'” 

Compared totheDECVT220,' M buy¬ 
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compatible terminal with free graphics. 

AT $1595. RESOLUTION 
AND FEATURES THIS SHARP ARE A 
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For those who 
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emulation. 

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the DEC VT52,'“ Data General D200,'“ 
LearSiegler ADM3A',” and Hazeltine1500" 
terminals. The 550 is DEC VT 100 
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INTRODUCTION TO 


IMAGE 

PROCESSING 


IMAGE PROCESSING, or I/P as it is often 
abbreviated, is a branch of computer 
graphics based on image data—the 
pieces that make up a picture. In 
essence, image processing is a special 
form of two-dimensional (and sometimes 
three-dimensional) signal processing. 

Scenes are developed from a camera-like 
sensor, either a conventional film-based 
system or a scanner, and manipulated so 
that they provide more information. I’d like to show 
just how common I/P is and describe some of its fun¬ 
damentals. 

Image processing is a powerful suite of techniques 
for uncovering information. Some of the techniques 
are comparable to photographic darkroom processes, 
but much more is involved. The principal idea behind 
image processing is to make an image more infor¬ 
mative. or. in communications jargon, to extract more 
signal from the noise. 

Commercial television has trouble displaying more 
than a dozen different gray levels. The human eye can 
perceive more levels of gray, but not many. If you need 
to be able to distinguish between shades of gray that 
are finer than you can see, you enter the realm where 
image processing can help. A black-and-white image- 
processing system can usually distinguish at least 32 
gray shades. 

Typically, computer systems treat images as arrays, 
or series of elements. The number of elements in an 
array determines the resolution of the image, and the 
number of bits available to any element of the array 
(or word size) determines the number of "colors” or 
gray-scale values each element can have. The smallest 
element of a picture corresponds to a single element 
of the data array. This element is called a pixel, an ab¬ 
breviation for picture element. Popular choices for the 
number of pixels in an image are either based on 
powers of 2 (256 by 256, 512 by 512, or 1024 by 1024) 
or on hardware standards like the 
52 5-line commercial television system. 

The number of bits in a given pixel 
determines the number of unique gray 


values or colors available. Eight-bit pixels 
provide 2 56 different gray values in black 
and white or 2 56 unique colors. Most 
larger systems have 24-bit pixels—8 bits 
each for red. green, and blue—which 
translates into over 16 million unique 
colors. That many colors is more than 
one can display on a monitor, and cer¬ 
tainly more than you can distinguish 
visually. 

At least three standard systems are used to describe 
color. (See reference 2 for more background on color 
theory.) The additive system works by considering the 
amount of red. green, and blue light you would have 
to add together to create a specific color. Color televi¬ 
sion works precisely this way. If you take a close look 
at a color television or video monitor screen, you'll 
see triplets of colored dots. Each triplet contains a 
dot of each of the additive primary colors, red. green, 
and blue. This triplet represents the single pixel, the 
smallest element in the picture whose color you can 
specify. Similarly, I/P systems are almost always based 
on the red-green-blue additive system. 

In contrast, when you're mixing paint, you mix the 
subtractive primary colors. The subtractive primary 
colors are cyan, magenta, and yellow. 

Finally, human visual perception is often parame¬ 
terized by hue, saturation, and intensity (or value). Hue 
is the simplest to understand; it is the "color” or domi¬ 
nant wavelength you see. for example, red versus 
green. Saturation, sometimes called purity, is easy to 
think of in terms of mixing white into a pure color. 
Red and pink are the same hue. but they differ in 
saturation—red is more saturated than pink. Intensity 
(or value) is the relativetive brightness of a color. 
When the relative brightness of a color. When you 
view a red wall with the sun shining brightly on it and 
then when the light is dim. the difference in "reds” 
appears only in intensity. ( continued ) 

Dr. Jeffrey L. Star is a development engineer at 
the Remote Sensing Research Unit. Department 
of Geography, University of California, Santa 
Barbara, CA 93106. 


I mage 

manipulation 
reveals hidden 
information 


BY 

Jeffrey L. Star 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYT E 163 












Since all three of these systems are alter¬ 
native ways of describing color, you might ex¬ 
pect that you could freely convert (or "trans¬ 
form") between them, and you'd be right (see 
references 2 and 3). From here on, however, 

I'll be discussing the red-green-blue additive 
system. 

Imaging in Action 

My particular area of interest is image processing for 
satellite remote sensing. Several U.S. federal agencies, in 
particular NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Ad¬ 
ministration) and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmo¬ 
spheric Administration), fly satellites with imaging sensors. 

NASA's Landsat 5 is the most interesting such satellite 
now in operation. Landsat has two imaging systems: the 
Multispectral Scanner (MSS) and the Thematic Mapper 
(TM). Both are multiband imaging systems. Because of 
their fields of view and the satellite's orbital parameters, 
they cover the globe between latitudes 80 north and 80 
south about every 18 days. Ground resolution for MSS is 
approximately 80 meters (that is. each pixel represents 
an area on the ground that is 80 meters on a side). For 
TM, ground resolution is approximately 30 meters. (Data 
from these sensors is available to the public from NASA. 
Ask for The Landsat Tutorial Workbook: Basics of Satellite Remote 
Sensing ; see reference 6.) 

Photo 1 comes from the NASA Landsat TM, showing 
a portion of southern California at the edge of the Salton 
Sea. The different colors correspond to rock type, and the 
San Andreas and associated faults run generally parallel 
to the shore. The image in photo la is a multiband color 
composite, produced as if several cameras with different 
filters were providing distinct information on the same 
scene. The image in photo lb is pseudocolor processed 
(see explanation below). Photos 2a and 2b are from the 
Landsat MSS. 

I/P Systems and Software 

Systems for image processing range over almost all of the 
computer field—from Apples and IBM Personal Com¬ 
puters (PCs), through small minicomputers, to mainframe 
installations. While small PDP-1 Is have been the standard 
in the past, the Motorola 68000 microprocessor and DEC 
VAX systems seem to be the emerging standards. The fol¬ 


lowing are a few of the commercially avail¬ 
able systems. 

ApplePIPS, for the Apple II with Apple 
DOS 3.3, and MicroPIPS, for the IBM PC with 
PC-DOS 2.0, are available from The Telesys 
Group Inc., Columbia. Maryland, at a cost of 
$495 each. These packages come with dem¬ 
onstration Landsat satellite data and are an 
excellent way to learn the rudiments of image 
processing. Classification (see definition below) and other 
higher mathematical functions are included in an ad¬ 
vanced version of the software. 

RIPS (Remote Image Processing System, Spectral Data 
Corp.. Hauppauge. New York) is a Z80, S-100 bus 8-inch 
CP/M system with a 2 56- by 240- by 12-bit image memory. 
The base price is under $20,000 for the complete system. 
Software packages cover a broad range of applications. 
RIPS will process satellite data that the EROS Data Center 
(Sioux Falls, South Dakota) now supplies on 8-inch floppy 
disks. Upgrades include video input and a 9-track tape 
drive. 

The IIS Model 75 (International Imaging Systems, 
Milpitas. California) and COMTAL/3M Vision One (COM- 
TAL/3M, Altadena, California) are dedicated image- 
processing systems that include display memory, a video 
processor, a parallel interface to a computer, a track ball 
and function pad. digital-to-analog (D/A) converters, and 
a comprehensive software library. A typical small system 
as a peripheral to another computer might cost $50,000, 
and upgrades include a Motorola 68000 or DEC PDP-11 
embedded microcomputer, with Winchester and 9-track 
magnetic-tape storage. These systems are typically used 
at universities and research agencies. 

The only specialized hardware you must have for im¬ 
age processing is a display driver and a monitor, although 
when performance or image quality is important a great 
deal of specialized equipment is available. Among the 
components of display drivers are frame buffers, D/A con¬ 
verters. and lookup tables. 

A frame buffer is the key to any image-processing system. 
This bank of memory stores the image data. Most 
medium-size systems use several banks of 512 by 512 
elements, in I/P jargon, the rows of the frame-buffer matrix 
are the lines of the image, and the columns are the samples 
along each line. A typical choice for a color I/P system 


Photo la: 

Color composite 
image of southern 
California 
by NASA Landsat 
Thematic Mapper. 


164 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


I 






is to have four memory banks or channels— 
one each for red, green, and blue, and a 
fourth for intermediate calculations and 
superposition of graphics and annotation. 

Frame buffers and their associated control 
circuitry can get complicated. Some systems 
give you an option to segment memory on 
the fly. For example, a given system can have 
128K bytes of image memory, and you could 
configure it as either 512 by 512 by 4 bits (16 colors), or 
1024 by 1024 by 1 bit (black versus white), or 2 56 by 2 56 
by 16 bits (64 kilocolors). Often, a system implements 
zoom and pan. which let you expand a smaller area in 
the image space to cover the entire display. You can ac¬ 
complish zoom most easily by pixel replication; for any 
original pixel, the system displays a 2-pixel by 2-pixel 
square on the screen. This procedure provides a twofold 
magnification of any linear feature, and, of course, a four¬ 
fold reduction in the area displayed. 

A digital-to-analog converter transforms the contents of the 
image memory into a form compatible with your moni¬ 
tor. The number of different intensity levels that a D/A con¬ 
verter can output is related to the number of bits it is de¬ 
signed to handle; the more bits, the more distinct colors 
or gray levels it can produce. Few systems use D/A con¬ 
verters with more than 8 bits of resolution. As mentioned 
earlier, for a full-color system this arrangement translates 
into 8 bits on each of three channels (red, green, and blue), 
a total of 24 bits of color information per pixel, or over 
16 million unique colors. The outputs of the D/A converters 
are generally formatted to either a standard RS-170 com¬ 
posite video or, in higher-resolution systems, sent to the 
display via separate R. G, and B (red, green, and blue) 
cables. 

A lookup table is an important part of an image-processing 
system and, like other lookup tables in the computer field, 
it is a table of stored data for reference purposes. The 
lookup table performs mapping between each unique in¬ 
put data value and some predefined output value. Appli¬ 
cations include color or density mapping and calculations 
that must be performed rapidly. You could also use a 
lookup table to assign any particular value in image mem¬ 
ory to any arbitrarily displayed color; this method of color 
determination is pseudocolor processing (more later). You 
could also use a lookup table to change the contrast range 


of a displayed image by setting up the table 
with a nonlinear transformation between in¬ 
put and output gray values; this adjustment 
of range can make the output intensities 
more distinct from one another or compen¬ 
sate for a nonlinear film emulsion or an elec¬ 
tronic sensor response. In the same way, you 
could use the lookup tables, for example, to 
take square roots of the image values. This 
capability is particularly valuable if you are using the data 
in the image in a mathematical model or a statistical 
classification. You can then "recycle' the output of the 
lookup table back into a memory plane, which allows you 
to save enhanced images and manipulate them further. 

Video processors are essentially array processors designed 
to work with the contents of frame buffers. They are 
dedicated computation units for performing certain rou¬ 
tine operations on images, such as computing the ratio 
of two colors in an image. They permit relatively small 
computers and I/P systems to work in "real time,'' which 
is comparable to the time it takes to refresh an image on 
the screen (typically 1/30 second for a standard interlaced 
display, such as on a color television or microcomputer). 

A frame grabber digitizes the output of a video camera 
and places the resulting image into memory. Video inputs 
are usually limited in terms of geometric accuracy and the 
number of available gray levels. 

A video film writer is designed to produce color slides and 
prints with better resolution than a standard color CRT 
(cathode-ray tube). Again, on a color monitor a red, green, 
and blue dot make up a single pixel. The monitor's ability 
to display color depends on the limits of your eye's re¬ 
solving power to merge the three color dots. Simply tak¬ 
ing a photograph of a monitor works moderately well, but 
the quality is limited by the nature of the phosphor array 
(not much better than 1-millimeter resolution at best) and 
the curved screen. 

Inside a video film writer are a black-and-white, high- 
resolution flat-screen monitor and three color filters. A 
single piece of film (color slide film or instant print film) 
is exposed to the monitor three times—first through the 
red filter, then the green, and finally the blue filter. This 
way. instead of the red, green, and blue dots being at a 
different place (as on a CRT), they are superimposed for 
each and every pixel. The business computer ( continued) 


Photo lb; 

Pseudocolor 
processing highlights 
specific features 
of the image. 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 165 





IMAGE PROCESSING 


graphics and computer-aided design/computer-aided 
manufacturing (CAD/CAM) uses for video film writers are 
numerous, with video film writers now available for under 
$4000. Some of the manufacturers include Celtic. Polaroid. 
Dunn, and Matrix. 

If you want to turn an image into an array of numbers 
and you need more resolution and accuracy (or “spatial 
detail’ ) than you can get from a video camera, you prob¬ 
ably need an electromechanical scanner. The original 
image—transparency, film negative, or paper print—is 
mounted on a cylindrical carrier (similar to an old Edison 
cylinder phonograph). As the cylinder rotates, a photo¬ 
detector scans along its axis and picks up image data. 
These scanners are generally large and expensive 
machines, but they have spatial resolution (in terms of 
pixel size) in the tens of micrometers. 

The reverse process—turning digital data into a photo¬ 
graph—is performed by a device called a film writer. In this 



Photo 2a: Raw Landsat satellite data. 


case, the cylinder holds a piece of film, which is exposed 
to a modulated light source (sometimes based on a laser 
in some commercial instruments). Such a device is capable 
of much higher resolution output than any monitor or 
video film writer; one manufacturer's specifications report 
a 2 5-micrometer raster over a 2 50-millimeter film negative. 
Negative and positive images and transparencies can be 
produced this way with high accuracy and geometric 
fidelity. 

Image-Processing Operations 

The principal operations involved in image processing are 
relatively simple. (Problems arise when you have large data 
sets. For example, the latest images from space derived 
from the Landsat Thematic Mapper satellite are from a 
piece of the earth's surface about 180 kilometers on a side 
and contain 300 megabytes of data.) A number of the key 

( continued ) 



Photo 2b: landsat data contrast-enhanced. 



166 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 














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IMAGE PROCESSING 


image-manipulation functions are explained below. 

Radiometric operations manipulate the intensity of the pixels 
in an image. For example, a given image may be washed 
out; all the pixel values are in a small range, and they are 
all very light. One type of radiometric operation, called 
contrast stretching, takes the darkest values in the image and 
forces their value to black, forces the lightest values to 
pure white, and linearly varies all the intermediate values. 
An example of contrast stretching is shown in photo 2, 
a series of images based on a test case in Sweden. Photo 
2a shows the raw Landsat satellite data. In 2b, the image 
has been contrast-stretched so that the dark areas, repre¬ 
senting water, show up better. 



Photo 3: A l O-nanosecond x-ray pulse generated during the 
heating of a magnetically confined argon plasma. Red indicates 
the most intense x-ray emission and blue the least. (Courtesy of 
COMTAL/3M and Sandia National Laboratories.) 



Photo 4: A neck x-ray image is shown on left. On the right is 
the same image enhanced by a spatial filtering operation. 

(Courtesy of International Imaging Systems.) 


Another radiometric operation is density slicing, where you 
display only those pixel values whose intensity is in some 
specified range. This operation is often used to highlight 
or classify objects in the image that have a characteristic 
brightness or color. Photo 3 illustrates a 10-nanosecond 
x-ray pulse during the heating of a magnetically confined 
argon plasma. In this image, red indicates the most intense 
x-ray emission and blue the least intense emission. The 
radial lines indicate the direction of the plasma motion 
prior to x-ray emission. 

Sometimes color coding aids in the interpretation of the 
density-sliced image; for example, objects whose bright¬ 
ness is in a specified range are displayed in red. This pro¬ 
cess, known as pseudocolor processing, is shown in photos lb, 
2d, and 3. 

Spatial operations are another family of manipulations that 
fall into several categories. One such category is registra¬ 
tion procedures, which are used to take an image and force 
it to "overlay'' another. For example, any map projection 
is a distortion of the earth's surface, and to superimpose 
an aerial photograph onto a map you need to "stretch" 
the photograph. (Imagine painting the photograph on a 
rubber sheet and then stretching the sheet until objects 
on the image overlay the same objects on the map.) Photo 
2c shows the effect of a registration procedure. The up¬ 
per portion is original data, and the lower portion has 
been rectified to a base map. Notice that features are both 
rotated and changed in shape; this is a typical application. 

Another category of spatial operations is filtering, a term 
used in a signal-processing context. For those who are 
mathematically minded, think of a Fourier analysis, in this 
case, a two-dimensional Fourier transform. By isolating the 
high-frequency components in a scene (those that recur 
repeatedly), you can find edges, as shown in photo 4, a 
neck x-ray. The first view is the original x-ray, while the 
second has been enhanced by spatial filtering. The im¬ 
provement in the ability to see structure is dramatic. Other 
smoothing operations remove high-frequency noise from 
an image in the same way that a filter on your stereo can 
reduce the sound of scratches and pops on an old record. 

Spatial texture, the variation in pixel brightness in a small 
specified region, can be important in understanding an 
image. Texture is often calculated as the standard devia¬ 
tion of the nearest neighbors around a pixel, and this 
deviation can be displayed as an image itself. 

Feature extraction and classification, also spatial operations, 
are powerful tools for image analysis. For example, if cer¬ 
tain features in an image are a unique color or gray level, 
a simple statistical exercise is to "teach" the system to find 
the features. Unfortunately, feature extraction is almost 
never this easy. Pattern recognition is a complicated 
science itself and enters the realms of multivariate 
statistics, geometry, artificial intelligence, and radiative 
transfer theory. The end result of feature extraction is 
similar to photo 2d, where water is represented by the 
color purple and the regions that are peppered with yellow 

( continued ) 


168 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 








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IMAGE PROCESSING 


correspond to known ground cover. 

In the realm of multiple-image operations, another family of 
I/P manipulations, image processing can be considered 
three-dimensional; x and y are the rows and columns of 
the image, and z (the third dimension) is a spectral or time 
component. For example, you can have high-altitude color 
infrared images of agricultural crops taken at different 
times through the growing season. An image of a hydrau¬ 
lic system from both visible and infrared scanners can help 
detect overheating in the system by interpreting the in¬ 
frared band as heat. In each case the data has a third 
dimension. 

Data compression can be an important feature in an image- 
analysis system. At a theoretical level, the most efficient 
representation of a scene is to describe the location and 
orientation of the highest-level object description. ("High- 
level" is used here in the same way that BASIC is described 
as a high-level programming language as compared to 
assembly language. A high-level object description is "This 
is a house," as compared to "This is a square white ob¬ 
ject 2 5 feet by 2 5 feet in size") This form of representa¬ 
tion requires that you be able to distinguish all the ob¬ 
jects in the scene, which is possible in only limited cir¬ 
cumstances. On a more practical level, it is often possible 
to describe the image, using statistical techniques like prin¬ 
cipal-components analysis, or reduce the size of the data 
set with other techniques, such as run-length and dif¬ 
ference encoding. Data compression becomes most im¬ 
portant when image data must be transmitted or where 
large amounts of image data must be stored. 

Down-to-Earth Applications 

Image processing is now being used in a number of 
disciplines. Medical people use image processing to con¬ 
struct pseudocolor images from CAT (computer-aided 



Photo 5: PET scan images in a medical study of blood flow. 
(Courtesy of COMTAL/3M and the Positron Diagnostic 
Research Center, University of Terns Health Science Center.) 


As hardware prices drop while 
capabilities improve, image processing 
will be used more. 


tomography) or PET (positron emission tomography) scan¬ 
ners. Photo 5 shows a series of images generated during 
a study of blood flow in a rabbit’s heart. 

Art, advertising, and publishing people use pseudocolor 
and other techniques in the pursuit of more effective 
graphics. In the era of computer text editing, the idea of 
"cut and paste” is common; here, however, this approach 
includes full-color images and graphics. While straight 
graphics systems, in general, have difficulty with halftone 
illustrations and precise color balancing, an image- 
processing system can handle text, line art, and images 
in full color. 

Structural engineers use I/P to examine weld x-rays for 
imperfections. Photographers can use I/P for a multitude 
of image enhancements that are either difficult or impos¬ 
sible in a conventional darkroom. 

In each of these settings, people are interested in im¬ 
proving an image's ability to convey certain kinds of in¬ 
formation. As hardware prices continue to drop while 
capabilities improve, image processing will become even 
more widely used. Courses in image processing are 
already available at many universities around the coun¬ 
try, and in a remarkable range of subject areas; at the 
University of California, Santa Barbara, for example, I/P 
is taught in the geography department at levels ranging 
from beginning to advanced. ■ 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

I'd like to thank David Eckhardt and Earl H ajic. University of California, 
Santa Barbara, for their help preparing this article, as well as Robert Crippen 
(University of California. Santa Barbara), SATSCAN (San Francisco, Califor¬ 
nia). COMTAL/3M (A Itadena, California ), and International Imaging Sys¬ 
tems ( Milpitas, California) for providing data and images. 

REFERENCES 

1. Andrews, H. C., and B. R. Hunt. Digital Image Restoration. 
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1977. 

2. Baldwin. Lee. "Color Considerations." BYTE, September 1984, 
page 227. 

3. Buchanan, M. "Digital Image Processing: Can Intensity, Hue, 
and Saturation Replace Red, Green, and Blue?" Electro-Optical 
Systems Design, March 1980. 

4. Moik, lohannes G. Digital Processing of Remotely Sensed Images, 
NASA SP-431. Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space 
Administration, 1980. 

5. The Manual of Remote Sensing (2nd Ed.). Falls Church, VA: American 
Society of Photogrammetry, 1983. 

6. Sabins, Floyd F. Remote Sensing: Principles and Interpretation. New 
York: W.H. Freeman and Co.. 1978. 

7. Short, Nicholas M. The Landsat Tutorial Workbook: Basics of Satellite 
Remote Sensing, NASA Reference Publication 1078. Washington, 
DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration. 1982. 


170 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 








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language more powerful and ver¬ 
satile. For example, programming 
capabilities even allow you to 
manipulate data at the system and 
machine level. 

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172 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 







THE EXCITEMENT 1$ BACK 

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When you're sending Electronic Mail, its just as easy. Once you've written and addressed your letter, the rest is done for you, 
automatically, while you're back working in another piece of software. 


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BYTE 


Sciences 


The Birth of a Computer 

conducted by John C. N ash .177 

A Low-Cost Data-Acquisition System 

by Kiyohisa Okamura and 

Kamyab AghaiTabriz .199 

Fourier Smoothing Without the 
Fast Fourier Transform 


by Eric E. A ubanel and Keith B. Oldham . 207 


PARANOIA: A FLOATING-POINT 

Benchmark 

by Richard K arpinski .223 

Modeling Mass-Action Kinetics 

by Alan Curtis .239 

Viewing Molecules 
with the Macintosh 

by Earl J. Kirkland .251 

Laboratory Interfacing 

by Lincoln E. Ford. M.D.263 

Interfacing for Data Acquisition 

by Thomas R. C lune .269 


WHEN I WAS ASKED to find articles under the umbrella of scientific com¬ 
puting, I realized that BYTE readers would probably best be served by ar¬ 
ticles focusing on the main aspects of microcomputer applications in science: 
development of tools of the trade, data acquisition, data analysis and reduc¬ 
tion, and modeling of scientifically interesting systems or phenomena. This 
month's theme articles delve into those areas. 

In "The Birth of a Computer" Dr. James H. Wilkinson, F. R. S., tells a fascinating 
story of the building of one of the earliest digital computers based on the 
designs of Alan Hiring. Despite the 30-odd years since this work took place, 
the account is surprisingly fresh and relevant to today's use of computers in 
science. 

The arithmetic underlying calculations is often ignored by users, regardless 
of their scientific background, yet it is important to know that the basis for 
these fundamental computer "tools" is sound. Richard Karpinski discusses 
one approach to learning about the arithmetic implemented on computers, 
the program Paranoia. This work, like so many others in the realm of scien¬ 
tific computation, owes much to the careful and detailed analyses performed 
and persistently reported by Professor William Kahan of Berkeley. 

Data acquisition can be a difficult task involving expensive equipment. Some 
of the issues in the analog-to-digital conversion aspect of data acquisition are 
described by Dr. Lincoln Ford. For those with tight budgets. Kiyohisa Okamura 
and Kamyab Aghai-Tkbriz present the hardware and software design of a Com¬ 
modore 64-based system. Tb round out data acquisition, BYTE Technical Editor 
Tbm Clune reviews the main avenues for interfacing experiments to computers. 

Once the data is in the machine, it must be processed before it can be regard¬ 
ed as useful information. One technique for removing noise from data is 
Fourier smoothing, discussed by Eric Aubanel and Keith Oldham. 

Having gained some understanding of a system, a scientist can attempt to 
model it—to generate or simulate the outcomes of experiments and "pictures” 
of what is going on. Earl J. Kirkland literally pictures molecules with an Apple 
Macintosh. Alan Curtis introduces the subject of modeling dynamic systems 
such as large-scale chemical or nuclear processes. 

We have tried to strike a reasonable balance between depth and breadth 
in our coverage of scientific computing. In a field as large and sophisticated 
as this, the editorial choices made are never entirely satisfying. Nonetheless, 
we think that these articles present some fascinating glimpses into a com¬ 
plex domain. 

—John C. Nasfi, Contributing Editor, Scientific Computing 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 175 















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SCIENCE 


THE BIRTH OF A 
COMPUTER 

CONDUCTED BY JOHN C. NASH 


An interview with ]ames H. Wilkinson on the building 
of a computer designed by Alan Hiring 


The story of the construction of the first computers is both fascinating and instructive. Under¬ 
standing the insights and decisions of computing's innovators may explain how the technology 
evolved to its present state and may illuminate the directions it might take in the future. 

Among computing's innovators were Alan Hiring (see page 65 for a review of a Hiring 
biography ) and the men he assembled to help him build a computer based on his Universal 
machine. Hiring's team included James H. Wilkinson, a mathematician who had studied at 
Cambridge and worked for the British government as a ballistics engineer doing numerical 
analysis of explosives problems during World War II. 

This interview was conducted for BYTE by Dr. John C. N ash and took place on July 13. 
1984, at the Nintft Householder Gatlinburg Conference held at the University of Waterloo. 
Waterloo. Ontario. Canada. 


BYTE: Dr. Wilkinson, how did you become 
involved with Alan Hiring and his computer? 
)HW: Shortly after the war, I dis¬ 
covered that a Mathematics Division 
was being set up at the National 
Physical Laboratory (NPL). I got in 
touch with E. T. Goodwin, who had 
been a colleague of mine at Cam¬ 
bridge in the Maths Lab. He was one 
of the first to join this new division. 
He invited me to have a chat with him 
at NPL in Bushy Park, Tkddington, and 
there I met Hiring, who 1 knew already 
by reputation as something of an ec¬ 
centric. Hiring and 1 had a long discus¬ 
sion, and I was very impressed with 
him. Presumably he must have been 
reasonably satisfied with me since he 
said if I came to NPL he would like me 
to work with him. 1 think that this offer 


and my friendship with Goodwin were 
the decisive factors. So in May '46. six 
and a half years after I joined the 
government service. I moved to NPL 
(as I thought then, temporarily) in¬ 
stead of going back to Cambridge 
University. 

Hiring had worked alone on the 
logical design of an electronic com¬ 
puter. When I arrived, he had pre¬ 
sented his plans to what you might 
call a "review committee'' at NPL. This 
consisted of a small group of Fellows 
from the Royal Society. The commit¬ 
tee decided that Turing’s ideas were 
basically sound, and they gave him a 
mandate to go ahead and recruit the 
appropriate staff. 

Up to that time everything associ¬ 
ated with the project had been done 


by Hiring himself. He was a man with 
an original and inventive mind. His 
design had practically nothing in com¬ 
mon with the group of computers 
which arose out of discussions at the 
Moore School of Electrical Engineer¬ 
ing at the University of Pennsylvania, 
john W. Mauchly and j. Presper Eckert 
had already successfully completed 
the construction of the first electronic 
computer, the ENIAC (this was not a 
stored-program computer), and their 
influence was at its peak. When I went 
to NPL in May '46. Hiring was work¬ 
ing on what he called version 5 of |his| 
computer, though I never saw any 
documents relating to versions 1 to 
4. Hiring was not a great documenter. 
and no doubt the earlier versions 
were buried in the rubble on his desk. 

Perhaps I should attempt to give 
some idea of the flavor of version 5. 
a typical Hiringesque creation. It was 

( continued ) 


Dr. John C. Nash (Nash Information Services. 
1975 Bel Air Dr.. Ottawa. Ontario. K2C 
0X1, Canada) is an associate professor with 
the Faculty of Administration at the Univer¬ 
sity of Ottawa. Canada. He is the author of 
two books on scientific computing and 
numerous journal articles. 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 177 








INTERVIEW 


a serial machine using mercury delay 
lines for storage, with a pulse repeti¬ 
tion rate of what I still call a megacy¬ 
cle. being rather old-fashioned in such 
matters. 

BYTE: Define a megacycle. 

JHW: The basic pulse frequency was 
provided by a master clock which had 
a 1-megacycle pulse rate. It worked in 
binary, of course. That decision was 
taken early on and was regarded as 
irrevocable. The word length was 32 
binary digits, which is rather better 
than 9 decimals. 

BYTE: They were fixed point ? 

)HW: Yes. They were fixed point, but 
one of the earliest things that 1 did (at 
Hiring's request) was to program a set 
of subroutines for doing floating-point 
arithmetic. These were later to be¬ 
come rather important in the history 
of NPL. Right from the start. TUring 
was impressed with the importance of 
speed. It is possibly not widely known 
that at that time most people weren't. 
For instance. Maurice Wilkes at Cam¬ 
bridge (who quite early became one 
of our principal competitors) took the 
view then that electronic computers 
were so fast that it was much more im¬ 
portant to get one built than to make 
special efforts to increase its speed, 
and his views were generally shared. 
TUring took the opposite view, and 
most of the special features of his 
machine were designed to make it as 
fast as possible. There was merit in 
both views, but it was certainly true 
that the machines we were designing 
then were not nearly so fast as they 
appeared to be. However. Turing's 
obsession with speed certainly made 
for a very untidy machine. A great 
weakness of mercury delay lines is ac¬ 
cess time. In order to make them rea¬ 
sonably economic, it is necessary to 
store a number of words in each delay 
line. Clearly, if one stores consecutive 
instructions in consecutive positions 
in a delay line, one could perform 
only one instruction per major cycle, 
and indeed the early machines (other 
than ACE) that were based on mer¬ 
cury delays suffered from this weak¬ 
ness. | Editor's note: ACE—for ",automatic 
computing engine—was the name given to 



Photo 1: English mathematician lames H. 
Wilkinson, one of the builders and program¬ 
mers of the early ACE computer. 


Turing's machine by Mathematics Division 
head ). R. Womersley.\ 

BYTE: "Major cycle meaning. . . ? 
]HW: ’Major cycle'' meaning the time 
of circulation of the main storage 
units, each of which held 32 words of 
32 binary digits and hence had a cir¬ 
culation time of 1024 microseconds, 
i.e.. approximately a millisecond. A 
conventional design would have 
meant that the maximum speed of 
operation was one instruction per 
millisecond. 

BYTE: Because, unlike a dynamic RAM. 
where you can get at any cell with one or two 
clock cycles, this had to use a thousand clock 
cycles. 

JHW: The other two early machines to 
work—EDSAC at Cambridge (which 
Wilkes built) and SEAC at the National 
Bureau of Standards (which Samuel 
Alexander built)—did. in fact, store 
consecutive instructions in consecu¬ 
tive positions, so that by the time one 
instruction had been executed the 
next one had been ‘missed." and one 
had to wait a full cycle for it to 
emerge. To avoid this. TUring stored 
consecutive instructions in such 
relative positions that the next instruc¬ 
tion emerged just when the previous 
one was completed. Since different in¬ 
structions took different times for 
their execution, consecutive instruc¬ 
tions were irregularly spaced in the 


store. As you can well imagine, this 
made for what one would call ’ dif¬ 
ficult" coding. I’m not sure that “dif¬ 
ficult'' is the right word. I would say 
such coding was tiresome or tedious. 
Also it made the design of automatic 
programming languages more labori¬ 
ous. while at the same time it made 
them more desirable. However, this 
feature of the machine turned out to 
be rather important; it meant we 
could do up to 16 instructions per ma¬ 
jor cycle, i.e., about 64 microseconds 
per instruction. 

This practice later became known as 
"optimum coding" or "latency cod¬ 
ing." but TUring never used that term. 
It was characteristic of him to see his 
machine as the basic one, all the 
others being out of step. 

BYTE: W hat was the ACE's total memory? 
JHW: Well. TUring envisioned a 
memory of 200 long delay lines, 
which would have given 6400 words. 

BYTE: About 24K bytes? 

JHW: Yes, and although that may 
sound rather small now. it was really 
very ambitious for that time. I am sure 
TUring would never have contem¬ 
plated or supported the building of 
a smaller machine. 

Shortly after I joined NPL. TUring 
moved on to version 6 and then rapid¬ 
ly to 7 and 8. Those were four-address 
code machines. | Editor's note: A four- 
address machine had up to four address 
operands after an instruction, one of which 
would be to give the memory location of the 
next instruction.! 

The earlier machine, version 5, is 
hard to describe in these terms. But 
its successors performed instructions 
of the type A+B to C and selected the 
position D of the next instruction, 
which was necessary because they 
were not in consecutive positions. 

BYTE: A complete instruction would occupy 
one word? 

JHW: Yes. but it was a more powerful 
instruction than that on a conven¬ 
tional one-address code machine. An¬ 
other striking difference in Turing's 
design was that he had a number of 
one-word delay lines and the arith- 

( continued) 


178 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 










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FEBRUARY 1985 • B Y T E 179 

























Inquiry 222 


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INTERVIEW 


metic and logical operations were dis¬ 
tributed among them. On a conven¬ 
tional one-address code machine the 
use of one accumulator leads to a 
tremendous bottleneck. One is always 
taking one number out of the ac¬ 
cumulator to put in another. By hav¬ 
ing a number of one-word stores 
(delay lines), this is avoided. You see, 
this was all related to Hiring's objec¬ 
tive of making his computer faster. 

BYTE: W hen a word had an instruction, it 
would also have an address in it? 

JHW: Oh, yes. 

BYTE: So it wasn't like a modern microcom¬ 
puter with instruction, operand, operand? 
JHW: No. 

If Hiring had stayed at NPL he would 
have gone for the full-scale computer 
with 200 delay lines, and quite frank¬ 
ly we had neither the facilities nor the 
experience to embark on such an am¬ 
bitious project. It should be appre¬ 
ciated that the full-size computer was 
far larger than the one Wilkes was 
planning and eventually built as 
EDSAC. 

Although I have used the term "op¬ 
timum coding." most programs fell a 
good deal short of the optimum 
speed attainable. To achieve this 
would have been far too tedious. 
However, when it came to very impor¬ 
tant subroutines such as floating-point 
arithmetic, optimum speed was 
almost achieved. As I mentioned 
before. I produced the first set of 
floating-point routines, but when in 
1947 Donald Davies. Mike Woodger. 
Gerald Alway. Billy Curtis, and John 
Norton joined the team, they all 
played a part in polishing them up. 

BYTE: This was all on paper? 

JHW: Naturally: we had no working 
computer. Because of the optimum 
coding, floating-point arithmetic (and 
other important routines such as dou¬ 
ble-length arithmetic) was much faster 
on Turing's machines than it was on 
its competitors. The speed of floating¬ 
point arithmetic turned out to be very 
important for me. When we finally 
built our computer, we dusted down 
our early routines and polished them 
up further. By the standards of the 


time they were very fast indeed, and 
this enabled me to get really exten¬ 
sive working experience with floating¬ 
point computation before it was prac¬ 
tical elsewhere. I am sure this is why 
floating-point error analysis first made 
headway at NPL. 

Hiring continued with the logical 
design of machines, but after a while 
he began to get very dissatisfied. The 
policy had been adopted that the ac¬ 
tual construction of the computer 
should be undertaken by some other 
government department such as the 
Ministry of Supply, where personnel 
experienced in pulse techniques as a 
result of working on radar were avail¬ 
able. 

I never liked that decision, but the 
director of NPL. Sir Charles Darwin 
(great-grandson of the great Charles 
Darwin), was not a very easy man to 
argue with. Remember. I was quite a 
junior member of the NPL staff at that 
time. But as 1 saw it, there were only 
two possibilities. Either the external 
group would be successful, in which 
case, if they had any imagination at 
all. they would take control of the 
computer themselves. Alternatively, 
they might fail. It seemed to me that 
we were in a no-win situation, and I 
couldn’t understand why Hiring ac¬ 
cepted the proposal. This attempt to 
get the machine built outside con¬ 
tinued very unsuccessfully, and Hiring 
got more and more morose about it. 

Finally, very belatedly, in 1947, Dar¬ 
win agreed to set up a very small elec¬ 
tronics group (not a division) at NPL. 
It was recruited mainly from people 
from other divisions of NPL, and in¬ 
evitably most of the recruits were far 
from being experts in electronics, so 
they were going to have to learn on 
the job. A disaster struck almost im¬ 
mediately. The person who was put 
in charge of the team—a Dr. Thomas— 
is often criticized, but in my view 
rather unjustifiably. Thomas was much 
more interested in industrial elec¬ 
tronics than in building a computer. 
I do not feel that this was unreason¬ 
able: it was not easy to have the imag¬ 
ination to foresee that computers 
were to become one of the most im- 

( continued ) 


180 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 












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portant developments of the century. 
However, from our point of view 
Thomas's preferences were unfor¬ 
tunate. But worse was to come. 
Thomas and Hiring had absolutely 
nothing in common and were scarce¬ 
ly capable of being civil to each other. 
So there we have the situation where 
the leaders of the two groups were 
completely incompatible. 

This, naturally, made TUring even 
more unhappy, and he began to talk 
seriously of leaving. Finally, he left in 
1948 and joined the group led by 
Freddy Williams and Tom Kilburn at 
Manchester. They were making rapid 
strides in the construction of a com¬ 
puter based on what became known 
as the "Williams-Kilburn store." Tur¬ 
ing's decision was. in my opinion, an 
unfortunate one. He should have 
returned to Cambridge where he still 
held a fellowship at Kings. 

I was left in charge of a team which 
consisted of six people including 
myself. We had virtually no contact 
with the electronics group, and at that 
stage Goodwin, who was in charge of 
the Desk Computing Section, had a 
long discussion with me. He said, 
"You know this enterprise looks now 
as though it's going to founder. Before 
you can be held responsible for its 
failure, would you not prefer to 
become a member of the Desk Com¬ 
puting Section?" 

Well, 1 just couldn't accept that. By 
this time I was hooked on computers, 
so 1 said 1 would sweat it out and see 
what could be done. 

Then a miracle occurred. Thomas 
left and went into industry where he 
had always belonged. The person 
who succeeded him, F. M. Colebrook, 
was an old radio engineer with very 
little knowledge of pulse techniques 
but a great fund of common sense. 
When he'd been in the post about two 
weeks, he came over to see me and 
he said, "You and 1 appear to be 
holding a very unhealthy baby." He 
went on to invite the four senior 
members of our group (Alway, Davies, 
Woodger, and myself) to join him in 
the Electronics Section on a semiper¬ 
manent basis and attempt to achieve 
something together. This would be 


182 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 




















































































































INTERVIEW 


about May or June of 1948. Cole- 
brook was a remarkable tactician, and 
soon we were all working rather well 
together. There were one or two 
uneasy weeks, but soon the animosi¬ 
ty died down. E. Newman was in tech¬ 
nical charge of the electronics group; 
he had worked on the H2S airborne 
radar system during the war and 
already knew quite a lot about pulse 
techniques. He and I got on remark¬ 
ably well and that was a great help. 
In those days supplies were a prob¬ 
lem. but fortunately one member of 
the electronics group, W. Wilson, a 
giant of a man. knew everybody in the 
supply world and was able to solve 
this problem satisfactorily. After we 
had spent a month or two building 
bits and pieces and generally finding 
our feet. Colebrook said. “Why don't 
we get together now and try to build 
a pilot machine, the success of which 
will demonstrate to the authorities 
that we are competent and therefore 
ensure the continuation of the enter¬ 
prise.” Then, in the light of success— 
we didn't hint at failure—we would go 
on and build the full-scale ACE. 

Now it so happened that we had 
done a little experimental work in 
1947 in the the Mathematics Division 
when Harry Huskey had spent a sab¬ 
batical year with us. At that time we 
had designed just such a miniature 
machine based on Turing's version 5. 
This enterprise had been stopped by 
Darwin when the Electronics Section 
was formed. 

lb a large extent we resurrected this 
machine, incorporating, of course, a 
substantial number of improvements. 
It was to be called the Pilot ACE and. 
effectively, it would be the smallest 
machine based on the logic of version 
5. which would demonstrate the prac¬ 
ticality of it. 

BYTE: H ow large a machine was the Pilot 
ACE? 

JHW: I suppose 1 was largely respon¬ 
sible for deciding on the size and 
scope of the machine, but any of the 
other three could by that time equal¬ 
ly well have done so. In order to have 
some specific objective, I decided that 

( continued) 



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FEBRUARY 1985 'BYTE 183 
























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Inquiry 116 


Fujitsu Printers 

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INTERVIEW 


Authorized 

Fujitsu 

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Inquiry 117 


it should be capable of solving fully 
automatically a set of 8 to 10 linear 
equations by Gauss elimination. This 
it would do in a matter of a second 
or two. very impressive for that time. 

BYTE: So you needed to store at least 150 
numbers and the word width was 32 bits ? 
JHW: In fact we decided to have 10 
long delay lines, that is. 320 words. We 
started to design the chassis in late 
'48, some chassis being designed by 
the "mathematicians" and some by 
the "engineers" In the event, the 
mathematicians probably designed 
slightly more than half the chassis. I 
must emphasize that I am now talk¬ 
ing about the detailed electronic 
design, not just the logical design. We 
put our newly won knowledge of elec¬ 
tronics to immediate use. 

We started to send our blueprints to 
the NPL workshop towards the end of 
that year. As each chassis arrived 
from the workshop, we put it into the 
main frame. 

BYTE: Literally a main frame? 

JHW: Yes. there really was a frame. We 
decided to use a plug-in assembly 
and planned to have spares of key 
chassis. 

By the standards of the time it was 
an incredibly small machine physical¬ 
ly. and yet it was in many regards 
more powerful than either EDSAC or 
SEAC. Direct comparisons are not 
really possible, but Pilot ACE was sub¬ 
stantially faster on most problems, 
and it could solve some problems the 
other two couldn't. 

BYTE: And the clock cycle was still 1 mega¬ 
cycle? 

JHW: Yes. still 1 megacycle, a slightly 
tough decision. Wilkes had decided 
on 500 kilocycles. Certainly some of 
the problems we had would have 
been a lot easier at 500 kilocycles. 

BYTE: If is interesting that the Apple II is 
a \-megacycle or 1 -megahertz machine, by 
comparison. | Editor's note: This refers to the 
instruction rather than clock rate. | 

JHW: Yes, that's right. 

The completed chassis would have 
started to arrive. I imagine, well 


through '49; I'm afraid progress was 
not documented. It so happened that 
the first chassis to arrive had been 
designed by AI way and myself, two of 
the mathematicians of the team, and 
naturally we put them into the main 
frame and got them working. 

Then when the next chassis arrived— 
which Alway and I had not designed— 
we assisted in its installation because 
we already knew about the earlier 
chassis. Thus, without any conscious 
decision being made, Alway and I 
became the debuggers. 

BYTE: Weren't the chassis somewhat different 
from each group? Or were these different 
components? 

JHW: Of course, the various chassis 
had entirely different functions. Thus 
several were associated with the line 
counter, several with the logical con¬ 
trol. and then there was one chassis 
for each delay line. (The latter were, 
of course, all identical.) 

BYTE: The line counter is ... ? 

JHW: This was the section which 
counted the basic 32 pulses in a word 
time. 

BYTE: All this is now on one chip? 

JHW: Yes, of course, and much more. 
Our units were vast by today's stan¬ 
dards in spite of being small by the 
standards of the contemporary 
design. Pilot ACE was also unique 
among the early computers in being 
extremely mobile. The main frame 
was on wheels and when the com¬ 
puter was finished, we wheeled it 
back to Mathematics Division without 
affecting its performance. 

BYTE: Was it power-hungry? 

JHW: It consumed somewhat less than 
10 kilowatts, which was quite low. But 
we didn't have any forced cooling, 
and perhaps the construction was a 
little too compact for that. When we 
were assembling it. we were, of 
course, standing in front of it all day. 
It was like working in front of a 10-kilo- 
watt fire, a rather trying experience. 

BYTE: Did you have much component 
trouble? 

JHW: Not really. Our main problem 

( continued ) 

FEBRUARY 1985 • BYT E 185 






Inquiry 226 


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INTERVIEW 


was with germanium diodes, which 
fortunately we didn't use on the same 
scale as SEAC. We used them for 
some gating requirements. Because 
our machine was so compact and 
didn't have forced cooling, the diodes 
were working at a temperature which 
was much higher than specified by 
the manufacturer. 

BYTE: So they would fail ? 

JHW: Yes, there were some good 
diodes and some bad diodes. The 
bad diodes would fail after perhaps 
a week in the computer. A good 
diode, on the other hand, would go 
on almost indefinitely, so bad diodes 
were eventually weeded out. 

Then came a key stage in the assem¬ 
bly of the computer. This was the day 
the first delay-line chassis was inte¬ 
grated. This was designed by 
Newman, and, as usual, he joined 
Alway and myself while it was in¬ 
stalled, but from then on he stayed 
with us. The three of us worked well 
together and debugged the whole of 
the rest of the machine. 

BYTE: W hen did the first program run ? 
JHW: On May the tenth, 1950. It is in¬ 
teresting that, unlike Wilkes, who had 
built everything he intended to have 
and then made it work, we added 
chassis by chassis as they were com¬ 
pleted. and as soon as it was possi¬ 
ble to do something (which was as 
soon as we had the control unit work¬ 
ing. the adder and the subtracter, the 
logical operations and one long delay 
line), we tried it. 

BYTE: How would you feed the data in? 
JHW: Oh, at that point we fed the in¬ 
structions in (in binary) from a set of 
32 keys. When it worked on May the 
tenth, it could perform only the sim¬ 
plest of programs. In fact, our first pro¬ 
gram achieved the following: it took 
the binary number set up on the 32 
keys, and every major cycle it added 
that number into the accumulator un¬ 
til it overflowed. Now. in addition to 
the 32 input keys we had a set of 32 
output lights. When an overflow took 
place, the program put on the next 
light. So successive lights would come 
on at a speed which was directly 


186 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 366 














INTERVIEW 


related to the size of the number on 
the switches. Now this program, ad¬ 
mittedly rather small, had to be fed 
in one instruction at a time, in binary, 
from the 32 keys. At the time the 
design of the delay lines needed im¬ 
proving; the amplifiers were some¬ 
what unstable. So we kept feeding in 
the program, and it kept being forgot¬ 
ten before we could complete the in¬ 
put. So I said to Alway, "Let's try it 
four or five more times, and if it 
doesn't work, we'll call it a day and go 
home." 

Well, we put it in about four times, 
and suddenly all the lights came on. 
This could have happened in any 
case, and it didn't guarantee the pro¬ 
gram was working. However, we made 
the input number smaller and the 
lights came on more slowly. 

BYTE: So the amplifiers had settled down? 
JHW: Yes. Then we doubled the 
number, and the lights came up twice 
as fast. We made the number three 
times as large and they came up three 
times as fast. On a binary machine 
that was quite convincing, so we said, 
"It must be working," and went home 
rejoicing. That program later became 
rather famous on the machine. It was 
known affectionately as "Successive 
Digits" or "Suck Digs." 

Sometime before this. Tkddy Bullard 
(later Sir Edward) had succeeded Dar¬ 
win. and when he visited the Elec¬ 
tronics Section (in late April 1950) he 
asked me how it was going. I replied 
that we should have something going 
in a week or two. Bullard was a very 
forthright chap, and he said with 
some scorn, "Come on, you can't pull 
the wool over my eyes. I've heard it's 
going very badly." (He had heard this, 
quite justifiably, via Harry Huskey.) I 
said. "You may well have heard this, 
and indeed it was true, but it's com¬ 
ing along nicely now, and in a week 
or two I confidently expect it to be 
working." 

Naturally, when it did work, I tried 
to get in touch with him as I had 
promised to do. I tried to phone him. 
He wasn't there. Now the machine 
wasn't really very good at that stage 

( continued ) 



Heath Company, Dept. 334-262 
Benton Harbor, Michigan 49022 


Please send me the latest Heathkit Catalog Free. 


Address 


CL-777D 


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Inquiry 134 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 187 




























INTERVIEW 


Inquiry 104 


Here are 69 reasons 
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and might stop working at any time. 
The director could not be traced, and 
1 was pacing up and down, saying, 
"The bloody director is never here 
when you want him," when he 
stepped into the room via the win¬ 
dow. His opening words were, "Here's 
the bloody director. I hear it's work¬ 
ing." 

I showed him this program, and he 
played with it and agreed that it was 
working. Then he turned to me with 
a grin and said, "It may be working, 
but the program's somewhat less than 
epoch-making," with which we had to 
agree, but it was very heartening for 
us. 

We continued to add the chassis 
one by one, and by the end of June 
most of it was assembled. We didn't 
at that time have a multiplier, nor had 
we planned to have one, on Pilot ACE. 

BYTE: You would use successive addition? 
JHW: Yes: it was to be done by a sub¬ 
routine, optimum coded so that it was 
not too slow. In fact, the optimum- 
coded version was about as fast as 
the automatic multiplier on EDSAC. 
So as soon as it began to do signifi¬ 
cant things, Bullard began to press us 
to have an Open |House] Day and to 
demonstrate it to the world. Well, I 
was a bit anxious about that because 
it wasn't really reliable enough. The 
amplifiers on the delay lines were still 
inclined to be unstable. However, 
Bullard was a very impetuous man, 
and he finally landed us with these 
"demonstration days." 

BYTE: When was that? 

JHW: It would have been November 
of 1950. By that time we could do a 
variety of significant things, but it was 
still not a very reliable machine. 

One of the troubles we had at that 
time was with the power supply—not 
our power supplies but that of the 
Central Electricity Generating Board. 
For instance, in the evening when 
everyone arrived home and switched 
on electric fires, the voltage would 
drop suddenly, and that gave us 
problems. 

BYTE: Historically there was a coal shortage 

( continued ) 


188 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 





















ffeomPUTSR WAREHOUSE 


CALL TOLL 

PRINTERS 


1 - 800 - 528-1054 



SPECIALS OF THE MONTH*l==g 


COLUMBIA COMPUTERS 

All systems include fifteen software packages 
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MPC4210 MPC4220 
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Other Information: 602-954-6109 


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Store Hours: Mon-Fri 10-5:30 Saturday 9-1 
Order Line Hours: Mon-Fri 8:30-5:30 Saturday 9-1 


Prices reflect 3% to 5% cash discount. Product shipped in factory cartons with manufacturer s warranty. Please add n/^ 
$8.00 per order for UPS shipping. Prices & availability subject to change without notice. Send cashier's check or 
money order. . all other checks will delay shipping two weeks. 

FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 189 














































INTERVIEW 


at that time ? 

JHW: Yes. Such things added to our 
difficulties. We knew, too, that when 
SEAC had had its first demonstra¬ 
tion—a little before us—it had been a 
fiasco, even though SEAC had, in 
general, been working reasonably 
well. During the whole of the time 
allotted to the press demonstration. 


it never once worked. You will find the 
early years abound with such bad- 
luck stories. 

I must confess to having been pes¬ 
simistic. We decided to have two 
popular programs for the daily press. 
For the first, they would give us a six- 
figure decimal number and the com¬ 
puter would tell them if it were a 


prime, and if not, output a factor. 

For the second program, they would 
give us any date from the year 0 up 
to the year 9999 and it would output 
what day of the week it was. It 
covered both the Julian and Gregorian 
calendars and dealt with all leap 
years. In all. quite an amusing little 
program. Mike Woodger produced 
that program. 

BYTE: And where did he discover the tech - 
nique? 

JHW: He worked it out for himself. 
Such programs are good fun, of 
course, but they leave one merciless¬ 
ly exposed to the vulgar gaze. Some¬ 
one puts in the current date, which is 
Wednesday, say. and the machine 
promptly says Thursday! So they're 
very much more dangerous. If you tell 
the press it's solving a partial differen¬ 
tial equation, you can swear blind it's 
solving a partial differential equation 
and they would be hard put to prove 
it is not. Finally, we were to have one 
serious program: this traced skew rays 
through a set of lenses. 

Well, we decided on this last pro¬ 
gram and announced it, only to find 
that we couldn't get the program to 
work. TWo days before the press show 
it had still never worked, and we didn't 
know whether the program had a bug 
or whether it was due to computer 
malfunction. Then, just two days 
before the show. Alway and I acciden¬ 
tally found it was a minor machine 
fault which was not invoked at all in 
our other programs. 

We got all three programs working 
then, just in time. The arrangement 
was that Bullard would entertain the 
popular press and I would give the 
demonstrations. The whole thing was 
to cover three days; one day with the 
popular press, one with the technical 
press, and a third day for VIPs includ¬ 
ing our competitors. Wilkes had his 
machine running in Cambridge and 
was justifiably proud of it. Williams 
and Kilburn from Manchester were 
also coming. 

BYTE: They had a machine too , didn't they ? 
JHW: They had a little hookup at that 

( continued ) 



Software Tools for Serial Devices 

Are you developing a C or Pascal program that will 
include functionality like this? 


♦ File transfer between computers 

♦ Realtime data acquisition 

♦ Printer/plotter control 


Blaise Computing Inc. has a 
set of tools for you. ASYNCH 
MANAGER" is a library of soft¬ 
ware routines, including all source 
code, which will dramatically re¬ 
duce the amount of time you need 
to get your applications working. 

Using ASYNCH MANAGER: 
you can control any hardware de¬ 
vice employing the RS-232 inter¬ 
face on an IBM PC or operationally 
compatible micro computer. More¬ 
over, your PC will be able to oper¬ 
ate at fast speeds, since interrupt- 


driven routines and flexible buffer 
sizes are featured. 

As with other packages in our 
Programmer Productivity Series, 
there are no royalties for incorpo¬ 
rating our routines into your 
systems. Other high-level language 
interfaces are planned. Contact us 
directly to order or to obtain addi¬ 
tional specifications. 

ASYNCH MANAGER “ 
$175.00 includes the first language 
interface, second language $75.00 
additional. 


Other products to speed your devel¬ 
opment projects in C and Pascal include: 
TOOLS" comprises a library of routines 
providing advanced string handling, 
forms utilities, screen handling and 
more. Features a general BIOS gate — 

$125 

TOOLS 2 * is a second library of rou¬ 
tines focusing on DOS 2.0+ operating 
systems capabilities. Perform memory allo¬ 


cation. program chaining, file and buffer 
handling from within your C or Pascal 
program—$100 

VIEW MANAGER“ is our screen de¬ 
velopment system which dramatically 
reduces programming required for 
screen displays. Block mode data col¬ 
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featured —$275. Source Code for rou¬ 
tine library—$150 


BLAISE COMPUTING INC. 

2034 Blake Street Berkeley. CA 94704 
(415) 540-5441 


190 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 32 
















^ouVe probably 
already outgrown your 
personal computer. 



You’ll know you’ve outgrown your 
personal computer the first time you 
realize it won’t let people share resources 
or work on the same job simultaneously. 

The fact is, the isolated, standalone 
PC is only the beginning of how com¬ 
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The fact is, your next step to growth 
is the new TeleVideo® Personal Mini.™ 
Simply plug it in and grow. 

Runs PC, mini and 
multiuser software. 

With the TeleVideo Personal Mini, 
users of IBM® or TeleVideo PCs, XTs, 
and portable computers can share data 
and expensive peripherals like printers 
and plotters. 


The Personal Mini dramatically in¬ 
creases computing power. So it not only 
runs PC software, but also hundreds 
of popular, fast minicomputer and multi¬ 
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And, unlike less advanced networks, 
the Personal Mini never sacrifices per¬ 
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offers multitasking. 

Enhance your original PC investment. 

Even system expansion costs are sub¬ 
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new IBM PCs. And your original invest¬ 
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computer education is never lost. 

1 


The TeleVideo Personal Mini. The first PC compatible multiuser system. 


Your TeleVideo dealer now has the 
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This is the first PC compatible multi¬ 
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IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines. 

k 




Computers 

TeleVideo Systems, Inc. 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 191 


















A B Computers 


@SANYO 
iSANYO 


Computer 

Ram Drive 

Price 

550-1 

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550-2 

128K- 360K (2 drives) 

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555 1 

128K * 360K (2 drives) 

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555-2 

128K- 720K (2 drives) 

CALL 

•EXPANDABLE TO 256 



IBM PC and PC XT In stock, 
available at special prices 


DISKS & ACCESSORIES 

Price per 5V«" Disk 


3M 



SS 

DS 

AT 

•ty 

SS/DB 

OS/DO 

9CTP1 

96 TPI 

H DINS 

10 

$1 53 

2 04 

2.31 

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CALI 

100 

1 50 

2.90 

229 

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200 

1.47 

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SS 

OS 

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DS/DD 

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30 Macintosh 3V»” diskettes in Amaray 
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data 

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SOFTWARE 

Math Blaster' (Davidson). 35. 

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Story Machine (Spinnaker) 22. 

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dBase III (Ashton-Tate) 460. 

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Framework (Ashton-Tate) 460. 

Multimate (Multimate) 320. 

Chart (Microsoft) 179. 

Multiplan (Microsoft) 129. 

Wordstar (Micropro). 335. 

J.K Lasser’s Your Income Tax 
Book and 2 diskettes 

(Apple & IBM only) . 48. 

Your New Baby 29. 

Kermits Story Maker 23. 

"Parsanal Pearl (pearlsaft)— Data¬ 
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192 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 7 






















































































INTERVIEW 


time, but it could scarcely be called 
a computer. They hadn't built the 
Mark I by that time. Their little hook¬ 
up was the first anywhere ever to run 
a stored program. It worked in 1947 
and found the highest common fac¬ 
tor of two numbers. This was. of 
course, a great deal smaller even than 
the Pilot ACE. However, it was an im¬ 
pressive "first" and I well remember 
being very heartened when 1 saw it 
working. 

My point then, is that Open Day was 
doomed to be a failure. The plan for 
the first day was that Bullard was to 
entertain the press upstairs, while 
downstairs we made sure the com¬ 
puter was working. We were to receive 
a signal when Bullard was almost 
through. We did. and immediately the 
machine stopped working. We found 
out, almost at once, that it was a 
chassis associated with one of the 
delay lines. We plugged in a spare, but 


unfortunately we knew that the 
amplifier, as it warmed up, would 
become unstable; the amplifier would 
then need to be retuned and in 10 
minutes all would be fine from then 
on. 

So we were expecting to run into 
trouble almost as soon as the dem¬ 
onstration started. Well, the press ar¬ 
rived. They threw numbers at us and 
the computer factorized them like a 
charm. It was indefatigable! 

We moved on to the "dates" pro¬ 
gram. It worked as it had never 
worked before: the day of Trafalgar, 
Waterloo, King George V's birthday. 

We moved on to the ray tracing. It 
traced rays like a fiend; nothing could 
stop it. It continued in this vein from 
10 till 1 o'clock. Then the press went 
away to lunch. We immediately looked 
at the output from the delay line, that 
is, the shape of the pulse coming out. 
It was the best output we'd ever seen! 


The computer 
factorized numbers 
like a charm. 


Further press representatives came in 
the afternoon; still a faultless per¬ 
formance. 

The next day we had the technical 
press, and it was the same story. 
Never before had it worked for any¬ 
thing approaching this time period 
without a fault. The third day the VIPs 
came. Surely it would let us down 
now? Not a bit of it. Wilkes was there. 

1 have always found him a very fair 
man, but naturally he was not pre¬ 
pared to give anything away. He didn't 
get a chance; it was perfect. It had 
already been decided that there 
would be a fourth day when it would 

( continued ) 



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Inquiry 182 


FEBRUARY 1985 ‘BYTE 193 





























INTERVIEW 



Photo 2: A hand-cranked desk calculator like the one used by Wilkinson to perform 
numerical analysis during World War II. This machine was manufactured by Brunsviga. 


be put on show for the staff of NPL. 
This was a Saturday. The computer 
had a small fault before our audience 
arrived, but we soon put this right, 
and once again it performed flawless¬ 
ly. The chances of such a performance 
must have been a million to one 
against. 

On Monday we came in feeling 
rather jubilant. The computer was 
down, and it took us about a week to 
get it working again! 

BYTE: Today a lot of people are coming into 
computing with no background in calculation. 
Many of the machines they're using don't have 
the properties that ACE did. with double¬ 
precision accumulation of inner products. Peo¬ 
ple have very little knowledge of this. How 
can these ideas be got across to them ? 
JHW: It’s a really difficult question, 
and I wouldn't claim to know the com¬ 
plete answer to it. Our experience 
with the Pilot ACE was really rather 
special. In order to get the most out 
of a machine with such a small store, 
user cooperation was essential on a 
scale which in many ways is not 
achieved even now. This gave one an 
intimacy with the machine; we were 
forced to look at the numbers and 
thereby achieved a deep understand¬ 
ing of what was going on. One can. 
of course, do this with modern com¬ 
puters. indeed the potential for doing 
it is actually greater, but one has to 


realize what it is one should be do¬ 
ing and why. For iterative methods we 
used acceleration techniques which 
were actually under the direct control 
of the operator. (For instance, when 
we were using the power method for 
the determination of the dominant 
eigenvector of a matrix, we could 
follow the progress of the vector on 
a cathode-ray tube screen. We had a 
cathode-ray display which showed the 
contents of any long delay line. We 
would look at the screen (which 
showed 32 components of the current 
vector), and we would see how fast it 
was converging. We would put a piece 
of paper over it. and we could say, for 
example, "It's gaining a binary digit 
every three iterations, so the ratio of 
the dominant to the subdominant 
eigenvalue must be about 2 to the 
power w: We could then set up a shift 
of origin on the input keys that would 
give much faster convergence.) This 
work was commonly done by assis¬ 
tants who were in no sense qualified 
mathematicians, but they became 
very expert indeed. It is surprising 
how well they understood the battery 
of acceleration techniques available 
and how efficiently they used them. 
When later we went over to more 
automatic techniques, they com¬ 
plained we were "taking the guts out 
of their work." They really loved these 
early programs. The familiarity and in¬ 


timacy gained with the computing 
process was fully comparable with 
that which one gets on a hand desk 
machine, where perforce you see 
every number. But on ACE that 
familiarity was gained quickly and 
painlessly. This experience was in¬ 
valuable. Is there any way you can get 
it now? Of course there is. but one 
needs to know what is worth having 
and to have the incentive to output it. 

BYTE: I would say my own experience is that 
we are transferring large-machine."faceless" 
programs down to the personal computers, 
where in fact one can go back to the ACE 
ideas. 

JHW: Yes. I agree. The potential is 
there, and it's much greater, really, 
than it was on ACE. But in my experi¬ 
ence. many people who do comput¬ 
ing are reluctant to look at numbers. 
At Stanford the general level of our 
students has been pretty high, but I 
would say their main weakness is in 
their inability to look at outputs and 
extract the meaningful information in 
them. In fact, somewhat to my sur¬ 
prise. they are generally less efficient 
at this than the assistants I used to 
have at NPL in the ACE days, in spite 
of having far superior mathematical 
qualifications. Most of those assis¬ 
tants had experience with desk com¬ 
puters and had learned to "look at 
numbers." The Pilot ACE forced them 
to continue with this habit. 

1 certainly do not want to suggest 
that the way to acquire this habit is 
to serve an apprenticeship on hand 
desk computers, but we have yet to 
learn how to instill the relevant knowl¬ 
edge. ■ 


FURTHER READING 
This interview examines lames H. Wilkin¬ 
son's role in building the computer de¬ 
signed by TUring. For additional informa¬ 
tion on this subject, see Wilkinson's ‘ Tur¬ 
ing's Work at the National Physical Labora¬ 
tory.'' in A History of Computing in the Twen¬ 
tieth Century. N. Metropolis. J. Howlett. and 
G. C. Rota. eds. (New York: Academic 
Press. 1980) and his articles on this topic 
in The Radio and Electronic Engineer (July 1975), 
plus a transcript of an oral history in 
Pioneers of Computing. C. Evans, ed. (London: 
Science Museum. 1975). 


194 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 








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FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 195 















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196 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 165 


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The EDU-LINK fiber optic 
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Inquiry 165 


FEBRUARY 1985 • B Y T E 197 




































OUR 

COMMUNITY 
NEEDS MORE 
CORPORATE 
HEROES. 


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to measure. 

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services and local programs of 
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So this year, be generous. 

Give yourself. Unibed Wciy 





ISScl A Public Service of This Publication 


THANKS TO YOU IT WORKS 
FOR ALL OF US. 

c United Way 1984 


198 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 



SCIENCE 


A LOW-COST 
DATA-ACQUISITION 

SYSTEM 

by Kiyohisa Okamura and Kamyab Aghai-Tabriz 


A compromise between cost and quality, 
this system is adequate for many research projects 


COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE data- 
acquisition systems are quite expen¬ 
sive. A decent system may cost as 
much as or more than the entire an¬ 
nual equipment budget of an engi¬ 
neering department at a small educa¬ 
tional institution like ours. Our solu¬ 
tion to this problem was to design 
and build our own system. A reason¬ 
able compromise between price and 
quality our system includes a Com¬ 
modore 64 computer, a video display, 
a disk drive, and some miscellaneous 
hardware for about $800. It has only 
8-bit data acquisition, but you can 
design a 12-bit system by using one 
and one-half I/O (input/output) ports 
(i.e., 12 bits) as the data-input pins. 
Furthermore, during breaks between 
experiments, our system can provide 
you with entertainment. Have you 
ever heard of a data-acquisition 
system you can play Pac-Man on? 

Hardware 

The circuit diagram to interface the 
real world to the Commodore 64 is 
shown in figure 1, and the corre¬ 
sponding hardware is shown in photo 
1. For analog-to-digital (A/D) conver¬ 


sion, we use an 8-bit ADC0804. To 
multiplex the multichannel analog 
input signals, we use the multiplexer 
(MUX) chip 4051. The outputs are 
connected to data lines PB0-PB7 of 
Complex Interface Adapter 2 (CIA2) 
through the Commodore 64's User 
Port CN2. The input channel selection 
is done by the three bits PBO, PB1, 
and PB2 of CIAL which are connected 
respectively to C(MSB), B, and A(LSB) 
of the 4051. For example, channel 0 
is selected by CBA-000, channel 1 by 
CBA-001, and so on. This multiplexing 
arrangement can accept up to eight 
analog signals. However, our plotting 
software is limited to three channels. 
The graphic resolution decreases as 
the number of channels displayed on 


Kiyohisa Okamura, an associate professor of 
mechanical engineering and director of the 
Applied High-Tech Laboratory at North 
Dakota State University (Fargo, ND 58105), 
holds a Ph.D. from Purdue University. He is 
also a technical consultant for U.S.-Japanese 
biomedical engineering and computer busi¬ 
nesses. Kamyab Aghai-Tabriz is a graduate 
student of mechanical engineering at North 
Dakota State University. 


the screen increases. Handshaking 
between the ADC and CN2 can be 
don e through a pa ir of connections: 
WR(ADC) to PC 2(Com modore 64) 
and INT(ADC) to FLAG(Commodore 
64). The latter is optional, and we 
don't use it in our software. 

The analog signal to be connected 
to each input terminal of the MUX 
CD4051 in figure 1 should be properly 
conditioned, which involves amplify¬ 
ing and biasing the signal so that the 
voltage level is between 0 and + 5 V, 
because + 5 V is used as a voltage 
reference in the ADC. The signal 
should be made to come as close as 
possible to the full range of the ADC, 
without exceeding the full-range limit, 
for maximum resolution. Therefore, 
you may need an amplifier between 
each transducer and the MUX. In our 
case, since the output of each trans¬ 
ducer was relatively large, we used an 
analog computer for signal condition¬ 
ing. For a very small signal you can 
use a differential amplifier. According 
to figure 1, one of the two lead wires 
for the input signal is for return and 
should be grounded. 

( continued ) 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 199 










LOW-COST DATA ACQUISITION 


The ADC converts analog input volt¬ 
age to 8-bit binary data with 0 V cor¬ 
responding to 00000000 and + 5 V to 
11111111. The computer shows only 
the decimal equivalent on the screen, 
that is. 0 to 2 5 5 for 0 to 5 V. respec¬ 
tively Any value between thes^ two 
extremes is proportionally converted. 
For example, a converted data 1 (dec¬ 
imal unity) corresponds to an analog 
input to 0.02 V (1 x 5/2 5 5). Similarly 
a data value of 37 corresponds to 
0.73 V (37 x 5/255), and soon. If you 
want to store or display the value of 
input directly expressed in voltage, all 
you have to do is divide the acquired 
data by 51 (255/5). 

Using this method of conversion to¬ 
gether with a manufacturer's calibra¬ 
tion data sheet for a transducer, we 
can determine the correlation be¬ 
tween the original physical quantity 
and the acquired data in the com¬ 
puter. Another method we often use 
is direct calibration. 

The accuracy of the A/D conversion 
depends partly upon the accuracy 
and stability of the voltage supplied 
to REF/2 (pin 9). We used the refer¬ 


ence voltage from the Commodore 
64 s 5-V power supply. Our measure¬ 
ment shows that this voltage is actual¬ 
ly 4.98 V with a ripple component of 
less than 0.5 percent. It is quite stable 
and accurate enough for under¬ 
graduate experiments conducted in 
our laboratories. If you want greater 
accuracy, use a more reliable voltage 
reference for pin 9. 

The serial data is output to pin M 
of CN2, which is connected to the 
coaxial cable as shown in figure 2. 
The other end of the cable is con¬ 
nected to the serial port of a receiv¬ 
ing computer either directly or 
through a line driver/receiver, depend¬ 
ing on the compatibility of the two 
computers' serial ports. For example, 
the Commodore 64 and TRS-80 we 
are using in our laboratories are not 
RS-232C-compatible. In the Commo¬ 
dore 64. binary state 1 corresponds 
to + 5 V and binary 0 to 0 V at pin M. 
On the other hand, at the RS-232C 
terminal of the TRS-80. binary state 1 
corresponds to 0 V and binary 0 to 
+ 12V. Therefore, these two com¬ 
puters are incompatible in both 


voltage levels and polarity. This in¬ 
compatibility can be resolved by line 
driver MCI488 as shown. If the receiv¬ 
ing computer uses + 12 V and - 12 V 
with inverted polarity, you should con¬ 
nect point P to the receiving RS-232C. 
With noninverted polarity, use point 
Q instead. 

We use a 500-foot coaxial cable to 
connect a Commodore 64 in one 
laboratory to a TRS-80 in another 
laboratory. We haven't noticed any 
voltage drop or noise at the receiv¬ 
ing end. 

Software 

{Editor's note: The program for data acquisi¬ 
tion is available for downloading via BYTE net 
Listings. The telephone number is (603) 
924-9820.) The main portion of the 
program uses several assembly-lan¬ 
guage subroutines that are loaded in 
machine-language form via BASIC 
DATA statements. When you load the 
program, the menu in photo 2 ap¬ 
pears. The menu and software are 
self-explanatory, so we ll only discuss 
the software briefly. When download¬ 
ing the program, eliminate all state- 


+5V +5V 



CN2 


Figure 1: A schematic for the A/D converter for the Commodore 64 data-acquisition system. 


200 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 





















































































LOW-COST DATA ACQUISITION 


ments headed with REM except for 
line 10. since they are strictly for com¬ 
ment and if typed in. they occupy too 
much space in RAM (random-access 
read/write memory). 

When the main program is ex¬ 
ecuted. all subroutines written in 
assembly language are poked into the 
appropriate locations as sequential 
data. Therefore, you should store the 
data (listings 2.3.4, and 5) as sequen¬ 
tial files. Assign names (listing2. 
Iisting3. and so on) to these files. 
When the main program is executed, 
these programs will be poked into the 
locations shown in the first column of 
each listing. 

A data-transmission subroutine is 
part of the main program. The trans¬ 
mission format is 2400 bps (bits per 
second), 7 data bits. 1 stop bit. and 
no parity check. This part of the pro¬ 
gram is also self-explanatory, but you 
have to remember to throw switch 
SW1 to the +5 V position when you 
use it. The screen displays the data as 
it is being transmitted from the Com¬ 
modore 64. At the end of transmis¬ 
sion. the screen displays an instruc¬ 
tion: switch to ADC and press any key. 
You then throw SW1 back to the 
previous position so that the CIA is 
connected to the ADC. 

The standard sampling rates of A/D 
conversion programmed in the main 
program are 1000, 500. and 100 
samples per second; you can select 
the rate as part of the data-acquisition 
subroutine. In addition, you can set 
any sampling rate by yourself by ad¬ 
justing parameters qq and ww in line 
1110. This setting corresponds to the 
default value when the instruction for 
selecting the sampling rate is dis¬ 
played on the screen. The maximum 
rate available is 4360 samples per 
second at ww = qq = 1. If you have 
three channels, this implies the sam¬ 
pling rate of 1453 samples/second for 
each channel. To lower the sampling 
rate, just increase qq and/or ww. 
These parameters are used in time- 
delay loops in the assembly program 
with parameter ww in the inner loop 
and parameter qq in the outer loop. 
Delay parameter ww has a greater ef¬ 
fect on lowering the sampling rate 


than parameter qq does. 

To calibrate the exact sampling rate, 
we used a square wave from a crystal 
oscillator as an input. Since the fre¬ 


quency of the crystal oscillator is quite 
accurately known, the sampling rate 
can therefore be determined. 

( continued ) 


+ 12V 


+ 12V 



Figure 2: TTL ( transistor-transistor logic) to RS-232C -level conversion. 



Photo 1: The A/D converter. 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 201 















































LOW-COST DATA ACQUISITION 



The Silver Fox™ Trots 
through Lotus like 1,1,) 


The Silver Fox has always run hundreds 
of programs originally written for the IBM- 
PC. Now with its new compatible video 
board and GW Basic it runs the most popular 
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the PFS series, and even Flight Simulator. 
Yet you still get an incomparable combination 
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MORE HARDWARE 

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you get more than twice the storage of a 
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floppys, and the Fox will read and write to all 
popular PC formats. 

Standard equipment also includes a better 
keyboard, and a 12" high-resolution, green 
monochrome monitor, with a full 25x80 
column display. And although the Silver Fox 
doesn’t have “compatible” expansion slots 
you can add serial ports, modems, plotters, 
printers, joysticks, and 8087 co-processor, 
and/or a hard disk. 

Because the Silver Fox is born on a totally 
automated line in Japan it is simply more 
reliable than PC’s that are assembled by 
hand. So we back each Silver Fox with a one 
y£ar limited warranty, four times the industry 
standard. 

FREE SILVERWARE 

Were this not enough, each Fox comes 
with the best free software bundle in the 
business including: 

MS-DOS2.il Sketch Spell 

15 Games Mailit 

WordStar FILEBASE 

CalcStar PC File III 

Easy Writer PD Disk 


Color BASIC 
GW BASIC 
HAGEN-DOS 
Qwikdisc 
Datemate 


If you didn’t think your 

$1397 

could buy you this much computer, 
give us a call at 

602 - 941*5856 

and we’ll rush you a brochure that will 
tell you how it can. 


C’olorFox. $1688 


The Silver Kox is sold exclusively by Scottsdale Systems 
Ltd., 617 N. Scottsdale Road #B, Scottsdale. AZ 85257. 
Trademarks: Silver Fox. H AGEN-DOS. Qwikdisc. Datemate. 
and Mailit; Scottsdale Systems Ltd. WordStar and CalcStar. 
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No CODs or APO's. 



Photo 2: The software menu for the data-acquisition system. 


The colors of screen background 
and data dots are determined by line 
1470 in listing 1. You can change these 
colors by replacing the number 22 
with another number. The number 
should be calculated as: 16 x (code 
number of dot color) -i- (code number 
of background color). In our example 
we used the white dots and a blue 
background. Hence, the number to 
be poked in is: 16x1+6=22. You 
can find the color codes in the 
Commodore 64 reference manual. 
You can also manipulate the color of 
the border in graphic display by 
changing the second number in line 
1520. 

When one channel of data is plotted 
on the screen, each data point is 
represented by one of 200 pixels in 
the vertical direction. The resolution 
represented by the error resulting 
from bit mapping is 0.5 percent. With 
three channels, the software divides 
the vertical axis into three sections: 
66 (top), 67 (middle), and 67 (bottom) 
pixels. Hence, the resolution of each 
channel is 1.5 percent. As the number 
of channels increases, the resolution 
decreases. 

The program stores data sequential¬ 
ly in RAM. In case of multiple chan¬ 


nels (e.g., displacement x for channel 
0, velocity v for channel 1, and ac¬ 
celeration a for channel 2) the data is 
stored in the following order: x(l), v(l). 

a( 1). x(2), i>(2), a(2). x(3).where x(l) 

and x(2) are the first and the second 
bytes of data for x, and so on. They 
are stored sequentially in RAM with 
the starting address of 32769. The 
number of data points for each chan¬ 
nel is 320 by default but can be 
changed. Since there are 320 pixels 
in the horizontal direction of the 
screen, 320 data points per channel 
is the maximum number of data 
points that can be displayed at one 
time. 

Conclusion 

We've found this system perfect for 
student use and adequate for some 
types of research. Though the system 
has many limitations, it is inexpensive 
and, above all, it's better than no sys¬ 
tem at all. ■ 


We would like to express our apprecia¬ 
tion for the help Mr. William Welscher, a 
graduate student of agricultural engineer¬ 
ing at North Dakota State University, gave 
us during the preparation of the manu¬ 
script of this article. 


202 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 



















































Finally, 

a New DBMS Technology 

INFORMA is what NETWORKING is all about: 
INTERACTIVE REAL-TIME DATASHARING 


The experts say. . . 


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Area Network." 

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TeleVideo Systems, Inc. 

"INFORMA is one of the finest, true multi-user 
Database Management Systems u>e have seen run on 
the TeleVideo Personal Mini 

Mark Calkins. Product Marketing Manager 


Novell 

"Many of our Netware end users have found INFORMA to 
be a very powerful and versatile Database Management 
System." 

Rob Walton. Manager of Independent Software 
Development 

•FAST ‘POWERFUL 


3COM Corporation 

The IN FORMA DBMS is one of the best examples of 
the benefits users achieve with multi user network 
software." 

Robert Buchanan, Jr., Software Product Manager 


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FEBRUARY 1985 • BY] 1. 203 



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204 B Y T E • FEBRUARY 1985 






































COMPLETE IBM™ PC SYSTEMS 



NETWORK 


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IBM PC STARTER SYSTEM 

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Inquiry 246 

















We apologize for our evasiveness. After our 
last advertisement, many of you felt compelled 
to contact us regarding the implication that 
The Shoebox Accountant is completely 
integrated on a single disk. Although we 
would like to confirm that a single disk holds 
general ledger, accounts receivable, accounts 
payable, and payroll modules, queuing files, 
and the powerful reporting capabilities for 
which CYMA Corporation is so well known, 
and offers the entire program for a mere $395, 
modesty prevents us from doing so. As ever, 
we prefer our same, subtle approach. 


Nice Box. 
Fully Integrated. 



The Shoebox Accountant:™ A complete accounting system for small business. 2160 East Brown Road, Mesa, Arizona 85203. 1-800-292-2962 CYMA 

McGRAW-HIll 

Inquiry 80 for Dealers. Inquiry 81 for End-Users. 


206 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 




SCIENCE 


FOURIER 

SMOOTHING 

WITHOUT THE 
FAST FOURIER TRANSFORM 


by Eric E. Aubanel and Keith B. Oldham 


An in-depth look at using the Fourier transform 
to remove noise from your data 


IN THE SCIENTIFIC AND BUSINESS communities, gather¬ 
ing and analyzing data are very important activities. Data 
is often collected as a set of values of some variable (e.g., 
sales in business or current in electrochemistry) against 
some independent variable, most often time, at evenly 
spaced intervals. The data is then analyzed for the 
presence of significant trends. Sometimes these trends are 
difficult to discern because of the presence of noise or 
other short-duration perturbations in the data. You can 
attenuate the noise either by performing replicate ex¬ 
periments and signal averaging or by smoothing the data. 
The second approach is probably the less satisfactory of 
the two; it is commonly adopted, however, because the 
alternatives are more costly or time-consuming. 

The three most common methods for smoothing data 
are moving-average, least-squares, and Fourier transfor¬ 
mation. In the moving-average method, each data point 
is replaced by the average of itself and n neighboring 
points on either side of it. The advantage of this method 
is that it is very easy to program. The disadvantages in¬ 
clude; the first and last n points are not smoothed to the 
same degree as the rest of the data set because they don't 
have n neighbors on each side of them; you must sample 
at a rate much faster than the fastest transient that you 
wish to study; and the method flattens the signal more 
than other smoothing methods. 

The least-squares method identifies the line of the order 
you specify that minimizes the sum of the squares of 
distances between the data points and the calculated line. 
The advantages of this method are that it will permit you 


to easily generate statistical information on the goodness 
of fit, and it does not require that the data be collected 
at regular intervals. The disadvantages of the method are 
that it assumes that you know the basic form of the equa¬ 
tion that the data satisfies, and the method is dispropor¬ 
tionately biased by one or two very bad data points 
because it will twist the line of fit to spread the error over 
the entire data set. 

Fourier transformation and inversion is probably the best 
method, since it lends itself naturally to identifying and 
eliminating noise. The reason for this is that noise is usual¬ 
ly present at high frequencies, whereas the signal proper 
is usually at low frequencies. Fourier transformation pro¬ 
duces the frequency spectrum. By eliminating the high- 
frequency portion of the spectrum and performing an in¬ 
verse Fourier transform, you can obtain the original data 
without much of the noise—the "smoothed" data. The 
primary disadvantage of this method is that the data 
points must be collected at regular time intervals. 

There are several reasons why Fourier smoothing is not 
practiced as often as other methods. Descriptions of 
Fourier transformation are often couched in unfamiliar 
jargon, though a few authors have succeeded in explain¬ 
ing Fourier transformation theory in simpler terms (see 

(i continued ) 

Eric E. Aubanel a fourth-year student at Trent University, is interested 
in applications of mathematics to chemistry. Keith B. Oldham, a pro¬ 
fessor of chemistry at Trent University, has taught and researched in 
England, California, Australia, and Canada. Both authors can be 
reached at Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario K9J 7B8, Canada. 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 207 








FOURIER SMOOTHING 


references). A second reason is the common misconcep¬ 
tion that Fourier transformation and inversion are massive 
number-crunching operations that require large computers 
and cannot be implemented on the small personal com¬ 
puters that people are increasingly using for data collec¬ 
tion and processing. Further, the success of the "fast 
Fourier transform" has spawned the belief that it is the 
only practical algorithm for transformation and inversion. 

Before discussing the principles and operation of our 
BASIC subroutine for Fourier smoothing, let's look at the 
discrete Fourier transform, the removal of high frequen¬ 
cies, and the features of the fast Fourier transform. Our 
program does not execute fast Fourier transformation, 
though it does incorporate some of the same features. 
It is not especially fast when executed in a high-level pro¬ 
gramming language on a microcomputer, but it can achieve 
excellent smoothing in an acceptable length of time. 

Discrete Fourier Transformation 

A good explanation of the continuous and discrete trans¬ 
formations can be found in the article by Stanley and 
Peterson in the December 1978 issue of BYTE (reference 
1). We will outline only some of the important features 
of the discrete Fourier transform. 

Performing a discrete Fourier transform on a sequence 

of real valued data x 0 , x,. x N _ ] produces two sets of 

real valued transforms: 

(1) 

O _L V (2rjk\ 

k - N 5 X, COS l N ) 6 = 0.1. N- 1 

(2) 

- 1 N ~ 1 / 2 irik \ 

' k = IT £ X/Sin ( N ) * = 0.1 . N- 1 

To regenerate the real valued data from the transforms, 
the following operation is performed: 



f k 



1 

• 



rv 


• 


u 

( 

) 

E 



Figure 1: W hen the digital filter function is incorporated into 
the FT algorithm, it eliminates all frequencies corresponding to 
k > E from the discrete Fourier transform spectrum. Frequencies 
corresponding to k < E are gradually attenuated. 


(3) 


N- 1 

L 

k-0 


Rfc cos 


/ 2 irk] \ 

( N ) 



i = 0,1. N -1 


The operation above is called Fourier inversion. 

The information content of the original data is trans¬ 
ferred, on Fourier transformation, into about the first half 
of the Rfc, Ifc numbers, i.e., those having 0 < k < ^ 
(if N is odd: 0 < k < f if N is even). The second half 
merely duplicates the first in magnitude: R N _ k = R k , l N _ k 
= -l k (see Stanley and Peterson for a good illustration 
of this). 


Removing High Frequencies 

The procedure for removing high frequencies can be rep¬ 
resented as a multiplication. 

( 4 ) 

R k fk R k' 'k - fkfk 

by a function f k (the so-called digital filter function). The 
simplest filter function is a rectangle, which would cut off 
the transforms for k > E. Such a sudden cutoff can lead 
to a false accentuation of frequencies corresponding to 
transform points in the vicinity of E. To avoid this you can 
use a quadratic filter function, which results in a gradual 
attenuation (see figure 1). The filter function we have in¬ 
corporated into our algorithm is 



The smaller the value chosen for the integer E , the more 
denuded of high frequencies the subsequent invert will 
be: the closer E is to ^ (or to | if N is even), the less 
affected the regenerated signal will be. 

Because there is no purpose in calculating those values 
of R k and l k that duplicate others or that will be replaced 
by zeros, the equations for Fourier transformation and in¬ 
version can be abbreviated to the following equations: 


( 6 ) 




1 

N- 1 

*0 = 

N 

E xj 

i-0 1 

( 7 ) 



II 

*0 

-1 

+ 

N 

N 

K = 1 

1 , 2 , . . 

. .£-1 



( continued ) 


208 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 ^ 













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Inquiry 265 

















FOURIER SMOOTHING 


( 8 ) 


_ 1 N- I 

'* - T 5 x i sin 

k = 1,2 . £-1 



(9) 

X 0 = ^0 + 2 ^ 


( 10 ) 

2jrk[\ 

N ) 

j = 1, 2./V-l 

where x ; . is the high-frequency-stripped analog of x.. Note 
that £ 0 is now expressed separately from Rfc, as well as 
x 0 from x y and that / 0 = 0 because sin 0 = 0. The factor 
of two in equations 9 and 10 is present as a result of 
restricting E to be less than ^ and by taking advantage of 
the symmetries (R N _ k = R k , I N _ k = -I k ) already noted. 

Though we used the word "abbreviated" to describe 
equations 6 through 10, their implementation still requires 
a lot of computation. Approximately 20 NE multiplications 
or divisions and 4 NE cosine or sine evaluations are 
needed to implement these equations straightforwardly 
For example, if N =200 and £=20, about 16,000 
trigonometric functions are needed, along with 80,000 
multiplications. Some microcomputers take as long as 0.2 
second to calculate a single trigonometric function and 
would spend almost an hour on this aspect of a Fourier 
program alone. 

Fast Fourier Transforms 

To meet the problem of the large number of multiplica¬ 
tions and other operations required to implement Fourier 
transformation and inversion straightforwardly, the fast 
Fourier transform (FFT) algorithm was invented. Books 
have been written on this topic, but here we can do no 
more than cite some of the features of the FFT 

The FFT has several advantages. (1) By using the prop¬ 
erties of the sine and cosine functions, the number of 
needed sines and cosines is drastically reduced. (2) Simi¬ 
larly, the number of multiplications is drastically reduced, 
these, in effect, being replaced by additions. (3) The same 
routine, virtually unchanged, can be used for Fourier trans¬ 
formation and inversion. (4) No storage space is needed 
beyond that required for the initial data; the transforms 
simply "overwrite" the original numbers. (5) The total pro¬ 
cessing time is massively reduced, especially when N is 
large. 

The disadvantages of the FFT algorithm, for our present 




Xj = Rq + 2 


E-l 

L 

k -1 


fk R k cos -fk'k sin 


purposes, are as follows. (1) To function efficiently, N is 
required to be a power of 2. (2) Even though far fewer 
are needed, the evaluation of sines and cosines may still 
be a bottleneck and therefore a memory-consuming "sine 
lookup table" must be incorporated into time-efficient FFT 
algorithms. (3) The algorithm is inherently "square," being 
designed to generate 2 N outputs from 2 N inputs; thus it 
cannot exploit the potential savings in the "rectangular" 
task of producing only E outputs from N inputs. (4) 
Because of the need to perform "bit inversions," program¬ 
ming in anything except machine language is not efficient. 

lb deal with situations in which the number of input data 
cannot be conveniently made a power of 2, the technique 
of "zero-filling" is often used. This inflates the number of 
points to be processed from N to the next higher power 
of 2—for example, from 200 to 2 56—with a consequen¬ 
tial increase in storage and time requirements but without 
any benefit to our present task. On the contrary, because 
it may introduce a sharp discontinuity (see examples), 
zero-filling hinders smoothing. 

For data-smoothing purposes, the disadvantages of the 
FFT often outweigh its advantages. This was the conclu¬ 
sion we reached after we had implemented a smoothing 
procedure that relied on a standard FFT routine. We there¬ 
fore designed the algorithm that is the subject of this ar¬ 
ticle. This new algorithm is not an FFT. It shares with the 
FFT the first two advantages cited above but does not 
share any of the disadvantages. 


Principles of the Algorithm 

Notice that equations 7, 8, and 10 are all of the form 


(ID 

G = 


M 





+ V m sin 



when G, m, U m . V m , M. and l are appropriately interpreted. 
To evaluate expression 11 our algorithm uses the follow¬ 
ing principle: The sum is split into odd-m and even-m terms, 


( 12 ) 

G = 


+ 


M or M- 1 

L Uyy, COS 
m-1.3 m 


( 2i r(m+ 1)1 2nrl 


N 


N 


+ V m sin 


) 


/ 27r(m+ 1)1 27r/ \ 

y n - n J 


M or M- 1 

£ 


U m cos 


(^) 


+ V m sin 



and the arguments of the trigonometric terms are 
modified in the odd-m moiety. Next, addition formulas are 
used to expand the modified functions and the m is then 
replaced by 2m- 1 in the first summation and by 2m in 
the second. After collection of terms, this leads to 

( continued ) 


210 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 










MICRO CAP and MICRO LOGIC 



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(408) 738-4387 
Inquiry 295 























FOURIER SMOOTHING 


Listing 1: The Microsoft BASIC version of the Fourier- 
smoothing algorithm. 

4 ’• FOURIER SMOOTHING WITHOUT THE FAST FOURIER 
TRANSFORM PROGRAM 

6 ’* By Eric E. Aubanel and Keith B. Oldham 
10 CLS 

12 INPUT “ENTER NUMBER OF DATA POINTS’’;N 
14 REM LEAVING R AND I ARRAYS UNDIMENSIONED 
LIMITS VALID VALUES OF E TO < = 10 
16 N2 = INT((N + 1)/2 + 1):DIM X(N),X1(N),U(N2),V(N2) 

18 FOR 1 = 0 TO N-1 

20 INPUT “ENTER DATAPOINT VALUE“;X(I) 

22 LPRINT "X(“;l;”) = ”;X(I) 

24 NEXT I 
26 GOSUB 60 

28 LPRINT “WHEN E = ";E;" THE SMOOTHED DATA 
VALUES ARE:” 

30 FOR 1 = 0 TO N-1 
32 LPRINT “X(“;l;”) = ”;X1(I) 

34 NEXT I 

36 INPUT “IF YOU WANT TO TRY A DIFFERENT E, 
ENTER 1 ELSE ENTER 0“;MORE 
38 IF MORE = 1 THEN GOSUB 60 ELSE IF MORE< >0 
THEN 36 ELSE 42 
40 GOTO 28 
42 END 

44 REM FOURIER ALGORITHM SUBROUTINE BEGINS 
AT LINE 60. LINE NUMBERS ARE THE SAME AS 
FOR THE HP VERSION OF THE SUBROUTINE 
60 PI = 3.141593 

70 PRINT “NUMBER OF TRANSFORM POINTS 
TO BE KEPT”; 

80 INPUT E 

90 IF E>INT((N +1)/2) THEN PRINT “E TOO LARGE" 
:GOTO 70 

100 IF E< >INT(E) OR E< =1 THEN GOTO 70 
110 IF E< =Q THEN 870 
120 REM 

130 IF Q< >0 THEN 330 
240 ’CALCULATE R(0) 

250 G = 0 

260 FOR J = 0 TO N - 1 
280 G = G + X(J) 

290 NEXT J 
300 R(0) = G/N 
310 Q = 1 
320 REM 

330 PRINT “WORKING ON R(K) TRANSFORM 
CALCULATIONS" 

340 J2 = INT((N - 1)/2) 

350 PI = INT(LOG(2*J2-1)/LOG(2)) 

360 FOR K = Q TO E - 1 
370 J1=J2 

380 S = PI*K*2/N 

390 C = COS(S):S = SIN(S) 

400 FOR J = 1 TO J1 

410 L = 2*J - 1 

420 U(J) = X(L)*C + X(L + 1) 

430 V(J) = X(L)*S 

440 NEXT J 


450 S = 2*S*C:C = 2*C*C-1 
460 FOR P = 1 TO PI ^ 

470 U(J1 +1) = 0:V(J1 +1) = 0 

480 J1 =INT((J1 + 1)/2) 

490 FOR J = 1 TO J1 

500 L = 2*J -1 

510 U = U(L)*C-V(L)*S + U(L + 1) 

520 V(J) = U(L)*S +V(L)*C +V(L + 1) 

530 U(J) = U 

540 NEXT J 

550 S = 2*S*C:C = 2*C*C-1 

560 NEXT P 

570 R(K) = (X(0) + (U( 1 )* C + V(1) * S))/N 

580 NEXT K 
590 REM 

600 PRINT “WORKING ON l(K) TRANSFORM 
CALCULATIONS" 

610 FOR K = Q TO E-1 
620 J1 = J2 

630 S = 2*PI *K/N 

640 C = COS(S):S = SIN(S) 

650 FOR J = 1 TO J1 

660 L = 2*J - 1 

670 U(J)= - (X(L)*S) 

680 V(J) = X(L) * C + X(L + 1) 

690 NEXT J 

700 S = 2*S*C:C = 2*C*C -1 

710 FOR P = 1 TO PI 

720 U(J1 +1) = 0:V(J1 +1) = 0 

730 J1 = INT((J1 + 1)/2) 

740 FOR J = 1 TO J1 

750 L = 2* J - 1 

760 U = U(L) *C - V(L)*S + U(L + 1) 

770 V(J) = U(L)*S + V(L)*C + V(L + 1) 

780 U(J) = U 

790 NEXT J 

800 S = 2*S*C:C = 2*C*C -1 

810 NEXT P 

820 l(K) = - ((U(1)*C + V(1)*S)/N) 

830 NEXT K 
840 REM 

850 IF E>Q THEN Q = E 
860 REM 

870 PRINT "WORKING ON INVERSE TRANSFORM- 
880 REM 

890 ’CALCULATE X1(0) 


900 

FI = 0:F2 = 0 

910 

ii 

CO 

O 

LL 

4 TOE-1 

920 

T = 

R(K) 

930 

FI. 

= FI + T 

940 

F2 

= F2 + K*K*T 

950 

NEXT K 


960 

X1 (0) = R(0) + 2 * (F1 - F2 * (1 /E/E)) 

980 

REM 


990 

PI = INT(LOG(2*E - 3)/LOG(2)) 

1000 

FOR J = 

1 TO N - 1 

1010 

T2 

= E*E 

1020 

FOR K = 1 TO E - 1 

1030 


F = 1 - K*K/T2 

1040 


U(K) = R(K) * F:V(K) = 

1050 

NEXT K 

1060 

K1 

= E - 1 

1070 

S = 

2*PI*J/N 


( continued ) 


212 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 






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Inquiry 136 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 213 
































































































































































































































FOURIER SMOOTHING 


1080 C = COS(S):S = SIN(S) 

1090 FOR P = 1 TO PI 

1100 U(K1 +1) = 0:V(K1 + 1) = 0 

1110 K1 = INT((K1 + 1)/2) 

1120 FOR K = 1 TO K1 

1130 L = 2*K - 1 

1140 U as U(L)*C - V(L)*S + U(L + 1) 

1150 V(K) = U(L) * S + V(L) * C + V(L + 1) 

1160 U(K) = U 

1170 NEXT K 

1180 S = 2*S*C:C = 2*C*C - 1 

1190 NEXT P 

1200 X1(J) = R(0) + 2*(U(1)*C + V(1)*S) 

1220 NEXT J 
1230 RETURN 


Listing 2: The straight-line procedure for eliminating the 
"end effect " can be MERGED with listing 1 without 
modification. Note that this listing is not a stand-alone 
program. 

140 ’STRAIGHT LINE CALCULATION 
150 SI = 0:S2 = 0 
160 D = INT(N/10) 

170 FOR J = 0 TO D - 1 
180 S1=S1+X(J) 

190 S2 = S2 + X(N - J - 1) 

200 NEXT J 

210 XI = S1/D:X2 = S2/D 

220 M = (X2 - XI )/(N - D) 

230 B = (X1 +X2)/2-M*N/2 
270 X(J) = X(J) - M*J - B 

970 XI (0) = X1(0) + B 
1210 XI (J) = XI (J) + M * J + B 


(13) 

lntM±i 

0- J, \u 2 m-\‘ ~ ^2m-l* + ^2m] cos (^f) 

+ [ u 2m-\ s + v 2m-\ c + 

where c and s are abbreviations for cos (27 rl/N) and sin 
(27 t//A/), respectively. If M is odd, equation 13 calls for the 
values of U M+l and V M+1 , which were not present in 
equation 11 ; these terms are to be interpreted as zero. 

A comparison of equations 11 and 13 shows that, at the 
expense of having to evaluate two new coefficients, we 
have condensed the number of summed terms by a fac¬ 
tor of (almost or exactly, according to the parity of M) 
2. A careful analysis shows that if such a condensa¬ 
tion procedure is repeated P times, where P = 
Int{log 2 (2M-1)}, then a single (m=l) term 


c = 1 

| newest U coefficient J 

| cosj 

( 2P ;'") 

+ 1 

newest V coefficient 

sin 1 


1 

l J 

l N ) 


remains, from which G is easily calculable. 

By adopting this P-fold condensation procedure, we have 
reduced the number of sines and cosines that each need 
to be evaluated from M to P+ 1, or from 198 to 9. for ex¬ 
ample. In fact, you can get away with evaluating only one 
sine and one cosine, since the arguments involved (27 rl/N, 

47 rl/N, 87 rl/N . 2 P+1 7 zllN) form a sequence in which 

each is double the previous argument, allowing the 
duplication formulas sin 20 = 2sin6cos6 and cos 2 6 = 
2cos 2 0 - 1 to be used with advantage. It must be em¬ 
phasized that our algorithm is for Fourier smoothing alone. 

Operation of the Algorithm 

I Editor’s note: The listings reprinted here are Microsoft versions of 
the authors’ HP programs. The HP listings are available on the 
FROMBYTE file area of BYTE net Listings. (603) 924-9820. under 
the names FT. BAS and FTEXT.BAS.| 

The data to be smoothed is entered into array X(J), I = 
0 to N- 1. where N is the number of points. The number 
of iterations of the condensation procedure, O. is initial¬ 
ized to zero. Lines 140 through 230, 270, 970, and 1210 
have been omitted from the subroutine listing. These lines 
can be filled with a straight-line modification of the data, 
which we will discuss in the next section. 

The degree of smoothing, E, must be an integer greater 
than 1 and less than N/2 (half the total number of points). 
The first transform calculated is R 0 . followed by the evalua¬ 
tion of R* and I* for k = O to E- 1 (see below). Then the 
first inverse transformed point lc 0 is calculated, using 
the quadratic filter function and R k . Finally, the rest of the 
inverse transforms x,, for j = 1 to N- 1, are calculated 
using R kl I k and the quadratic filter function. These inverse 
transforms consist of the smoothed data and are stored 
in array X\(f), I = 0 to N-\. 

After one pass through the subroutine, you may want 
to select a different degree of smoothing. To do so. you 
execute the subroutine again. Since many of the trans¬ 
forms will have been calculated previously (the number 
currently existing is O). this second execution of the sub¬ 
routine will require fewer transform calculations (or none 
if greater smoothing—i.e., a smaller E—is chosen). 

Examples 

Let’s take a look at three types of applications of our al¬ 
gorithm: on scientific data, meteorological data, and an¬ 
nual agricultural statistics. 

Our first example concerns electrochemical data ac¬ 
quired in this laboratory during studies of very low con- 

( continued ) 


214 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 










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We’ll send you a free networking 
brochure and give you the name of 
the nearest dealer. 


Multiuser Concurrent DOS is a trademark of Gifford 
Computer Systems. Concurrent DOS is a trademark of Digital 
Research, Inc. ARCNET is a trademark of Datapoint 
Corporation. IBM PC-XT is a registered trademark of IBM 
Corporation. CompuPro is a registered trademark of 
CompuPro Corporation. Lotus 1-2-3 is a trademark of Lotus 
Development Corp. Virtual Terminals is a trademark of 
Gifford Computer Systems. 


COMPUTER SYSTEMS 

A subsidiary of Zitel Corporation 

2446 Verna Court 
San Leandro, CA 94577 
(415) 895-0798 TELEX: 704521 
Houston. TX (713) 680-1944 


Inquiry 121 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYT E 215 






















FOURIER SMOOTHING 


centrations of heavy metal in water. Because the signal 
is so small, it is contaminated with noise (see figure 2). 
Fourier smoothing the data eliminates the noise, leaving 
the signal proper. This illustrates the virtue of Fourier 
smoothing experimental data acquired electronically, since 
it can eliminate the high-frequency noise originating from 
the instrumentation. The peak height, which is propor¬ 
tional to the metal concentration, can be quantified easi¬ 
ly from the smoothed curve. 

Choosing the right degree of smoothing, by varying £, 
is a matter of trial and error. The effects of undersmooth¬ 
ing and oversmoothing are illustrated in figure 2. We ob¬ 
tained the best smoothing when 3 < E < 9. 

Consider a graph of daily maximum temperature 
readings for the period of lanuary 1982 to (une 1983. 
shown in figure 3. There is a clear seasonal variation, but 
there is also a great deal of scatter. This scatter is caused 



Figure 2: Ah example of Fourier smoothing scientific data. The 
data represents a derivative neopolarogram at a static-mercury- 
drop electrode. The black line, showing proper smoothing, was ob¬ 
tained by N = 72, E = 8. In the red line, showing under¬ 
smoothing. E = 20. In the oversmoothed blue line E = 4. 


by short-term variations in the temperature due to chang¬ 
ing weather conditions. To better examine the underlying 
seasonal variations, it would help to eliminate the short- 
duration fluctuations of temperature. A direct application 
of Fourier smoothing, however, produces the red line 
shown in figure 3, which is obviously not satisfactory. The 
smoothed curve does not match the data at the ends. The 
cause of this "end effect" is that some high frequencies 
not due to noise were eliminated in the smoothing pro¬ 
cess. The "genuine" high frequencies come from the 
discontinuity between the beginning and the end of the 
data. The discrete Fourier transform treats the data as 
periodic; that is, it assumes that the last points are fol¬ 
lowed by replicas of the initial points (see figure 4a). Thus 
the transform "perceives" a sudden jump between the end 
of one period and the beginning of the next. Sudden 

( continued ) 



Figure 3: Daily maximum temperatures at the Peterborough, 
Ontario, weather station from January 1982 through June 
1983. The red line (N = 546, E = 9) provides an example of 
false smoothing due to an "end effect." To correct for this effect, 
subtract a straight line (black) joining the ends of the un¬ 
smoothed data. The resulting ''normalized" smoothing is shown 
by the blue line (E = 7). 


(a) 

* * 

* 0 * 

. •' •. . * * *. (b) 

■ . * * 


* * 

* * 

* * 



Figure 4: An explanation of the "end effect," which results 
from the discrete Fourier transform treating the data as periodic 
(a). The sudden jumps between one period and the next produce 
"genuine" high frequencies (not associated with noise ) in the 
transform spectrum. To eliminate the "end effect" subtract a 


straight line joining the ends from the data. The result of this 
operation is shown in (b). Notice that now the data begins and 
ends at the same ordinate value, which means that there are no 
sudden discontinuities from the transform's point of view. 


216 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 





















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FOURIER SMOOTHING 


jumps correspond to high frequencies, which in turn result 
in more high frequencies in the transform spectrum. 

The solution to the problem of retaining genuine high 
frequencies from transformed data is to subtract a straight 
line joining the beginning and the end of the unsmoothed 
data. Initially we thought of subtracting a line joining the 
first and last points. However, since the unsmoothed data 
contains a lot of scatter, the straight line joining the end 
points would not necessarily match the beginning and end 
of the trend. We dealt with this problem by taking the first 
and last 10 percent of points, averaging each set, and join¬ 
ing the two resulting points. The procedure consists of sub¬ 
tracting the line from the unsmoothed data, smoothing 
the modified data, then adding the line on to the 
smoothed data. As mentioned before, the effect of sub¬ 
tracting the line is to eliminate end discontinuities (figure 
4b). To include this procedure in the smoothing 
subroutine, you should merge the program steps shown 
in listing 2 with listing 1. 

The result of treating the data in figure 3 with a straight 
line is shown as a blue line, which produces a much bet¬ 
ter fit. Note that a greater degree of smoothing is used 
here than in the "unnormalized" (red) line. Since we have 
now eliminated most "genuine" high frequencies, we can 
filter out more high frequencies. 

Historical statistics can be found on such varied sub¬ 
jects as wheat production and the number of hospital 
beds. In many cases there is an upward trend, due to the 
increasing population and increasing costs. To examine 
a trend over a long period of time, you may want to 
smooth the data. 

Our third case concerns wheat production in Canada 
from 1906 to 1974 (see figure 5). Here there is a great 
deal of noise, which makes it difficult to draw a definitive 
trend "by eye." The Fourier-smoothed curve shows an up¬ 
ward trend, as expected, but not in a straight line. This 
is important, because a straight-line fit might be an over¬ 
simplification for a particular analysis. 

There are other, more subtle sources of high frequen¬ 
cies that will not be discussed but should be mentioned. 



Figure 5: Unsmoothed (dots) and smoothed (line) statistical data 
on wheat production in Canada from 1906 through 1974. The 
large amount of scatter makes it difficult to draw a straight curve 
through the data. Fourier smoothing accomplishes this quite well, 
given an appropriate choice of the degree of smoothing. 

Smoothing parameters: N = 69. E « 3. 


Sudden discontinuities other than the end type may oc¬ 
cur in the data, and these may be treated by subtracting 
several straight lines where appropriate. You can also han¬ 
dle this problem by smoothing the continuous segments 
separately instead of treating the data as a whole. Another 
source of high frequencies is a sudden change in slope, 
which is more difficult to correct. Here it is necessary to 
subtract an appropriate curve that matches the portion 
of the data that changes slope abruptly. ■ 

REFERENCES 

1. Stanley W. D.. and S. J. Peterson. "Fast Fourier Transforms on 
Your Home Computer." BYTE, December 1978, page 14. 

2. Zimmermann. M. "A Beginner's Guide to Spectral Analysis," 
parts 1 and 2. BYTE. February 1981. page 68. and March 1981, 
page 166. 

3. Lord. R. H. "Fast Fourier for the 6800." BYTE, February 1979. 
page 108. 


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218 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 240 





















Would you hire an entire band when 
all you need is one instrument? Of 
course not. 

So why use a whole orchestra of 
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to develop software for virtually any 
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200.00 

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XASM09 

6809 

200.00 

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XASM18 

1802/1805 

200.00 

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XASM48 

8048/8041 

200.00 

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XASM51 

8051 

200.00 

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XASM65 

6502/65C02 

200.00 

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XASM68 

6800/01, 6301 

200.00 

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XASM75 

NEC 7500 

500.00 

500.00 

XASM85 

8085 

250.00 

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COP400 

300.00 

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F8/3870 

300.00 

300.00 

XASMZ8 

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200.00 

250.00 

XASMZ80 

Z80 

250.00 

250.00 

XMAC682 NEW 

68200 

595.00 

595.00 

XMAC68K NEW 

68000/68010 

595.00 

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Development Tools That Work 

Avocet cross-assemblers are fast, reliable 
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VEDIT Text Editor makes source code 
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tasks. Easy installation - INSTALL pro¬ 
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keyboard layout. CP/M-80,CP/M-86, 
MSDOS, PCDOS.$150 

EPROM Programmers let you pro 

gram, verify, compare, read, display 
EPROMS but cost less because they 
communicate through your personal 
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modules! On-board intelligence provides 
menu-based setup for 34 different 
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devices require socket adaptors). Self- 
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Driver software (sold separately) gives 
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Model 7228 Advanced Programmer 

— Supports all PROM types listed. Super¬ 
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Model 7128 Standard Programmer — 

Lower-cost version of 7228. Supports all 
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Model 7956 and 7956-SA Gang Pro¬ 
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27128,27128A, 27256,2508,2516,2532,2564,68764, 
68766, 5133, 5143. CMOS: 27C16, 27C32, 27C64, 
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7228 Advanced Programmer $ 549 

7128 Standard Programmer 429 

7956 Laboratory Gang Programmer 1099 

7956-SA Stand-Alone Gang Programmer 879 
GDX Driver Software 95 

481 8748 Family Socket Adaptor 98 

511 8751 Socket Adaptor 174 

755 8755 Socket Adaptor 135 


CABLE RS-232 Cable (specify gender) 30 

HEXTRAN Universal HEX File Con¬ 
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Dover, Delaware 19901 


Inquiry 27 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 219 





































220 B Y T E • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 161 

























































































Commodore Accessories ProModem 1200 and Options Apple Accessories 


RS232 ADAPTER FOR 
VIC-20 AND COMMODORE 64 



The JE232CM allows connection of standard serial RS232 
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JE232CM $39.95 


VOICE SYNTHESIZER 
FOR APPLE AND COMMODORE 



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Prometheus Telephone Modem with 
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PM1200 RS-232 Stand Alone Unit. $349.95 

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Each Kit comes complete with eight MM5290 (UPD416/4116) 16K Dynamic 
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TRS-64K-2.$38.95 

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datashield 

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PC200 (Output rating: 200 watts).$299.95 

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Apple Keyboard and Case 
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Documentation 
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MPI51S (MPI 5V SS full-ht.).$ 89.95 

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PCK-5 (514 - Power Cable Kit).$2.95 

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JE664 EPROM PROGRAMMER 
8K to 64K EPROMS - 24 & 28 Pin Packages 

Completely Sell Contained - Requires No Additional Systems for Operation 

- Programs and validates EPROMs - Checks tor properly erased EPROMs 
• Emulates PROMs or EPROMs • RS232C Computer Interface tor editing and 
program loading • Loads data into RAM by keyboard • Changes data in RAM 
by keyboard • Loads RAM from an EPROM • Compares EPROMs tor content 
differences • Copies EPROMs • Power Input 115VAC, 60Hz. less than 10W 
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The JE664 EPROM Programmer emulates am) programs various 8-Brt Word EPROMs trom 8K to 
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trom the panel's test socket to an external microprocessor In programming and emulation, the 
JE664 allows lor examination, change and validation ot program content The JE664's RAMs 
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to be programmed later without necessity ol "UV" erasing The JE664 displays DATA and 
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button changes the DATA readout trom RAM word to EPROM word and is displayed in both 
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Programmer includes one JM16A Jumper Module (as listed below) 


Assembled & Tested (Includes JM16A Module) 

JE665 - RS232C INTERFACE OPTION - The RS232C Interlace Option implements 
computer access to the JE664 s RAM This allows the computer to manipulate store and 
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EPROM Programmer W/JE665 Option 
JE664-ARS . $1195.00 

Assembled & Tested (Includes JM16A Module) 


EPROM JUMPER MODULES - The JE664 s JUMPER M00U.E (Personality Module) is a 
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configures the EPROM socket connections lor that particular EPROM 

JHMEnMi 

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Inquiry 161 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 221 








































































































































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PA residents add sales ta* APO FPO. and International orders add S5 00 
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222 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 191 


























SCIENCE 


PARANOIA: A 
FLOATING-POINT 
BENCHMARK 

by Richard Karpinski 


Test the quality of your software, not just its speed 


FLOATING-POINT ARITHMETIC was 
created to make programming easier 
and programs faster. It is complicated 
so that your programs can be simple, 
but rough edges and pitfalls are com¬ 
mon in floating-point systems. 

The Paranoia benchmark was de¬ 
signed to find and notify you of those 
places where actual results are not 
good enough. It reports pitfalls 
discovered in a systematic checkout 
of the arithmetic used by the com¬ 
puter running it. Why Paranoia? 
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary 
(Springfield. MA: Merriam-Webster 
Inc.. 1983) provides the following as 
its second definition of paranoia: "a 
tendency on the part of an individual 
or group toward excessive or irra¬ 
tional suspiciousness and distrustful¬ 
ness of others'—an apt description of 
this program, which looks for prob¬ 
lems at every turn. This article looks 
into the workings of floating-point 
arithmetic to see why you need such 
quality tests and how they work. 

Life Without Floating Point 

Remember those heavy mechanical 
calculators with 10 long rows of keys? 


If you wanted to use measurements 
in fractions rather than whole 
numbers, you could set the decimal 
point somewhere in the middle of the 
field. Numbers could grow or shrink 
on either side of it, but the point itself 
was really fixed. This is enough for 
many hand calculations where you 
need only 5 or 10 steps to get the final 
result. Fixed-point calculations like 
this are simple and match the pencil- 
and-paper methods we learned in 
grade school. They are easy to under¬ 
stand and use. and they work quite 
well almost all the time. 

Almost is not enough, however. Even 
events that happen quite rarely re¬ 
quire careful attention when you are 
designing a computer system. 
Because computers are so much 


Richard Karpinski (IEEE p8 54 Mailings. 
U-76 UCSF. San Francisco, CA 94143) is 
the manager of UNIX services at the com¬ 
puter center at the University of California 
at San Francisco. With interests in software 
engineering , Modula-2, and other aspects of 
computer science, Dick has enjoyed being "the 
consultant of last resort " for many in the past 
two decades. 


faster than we are. a system that works 
correctly on 99.999 percent of its data 
can still fail once every second. With 
paper and pencil, if a few numbers 
don't fit within the limits you have 
chosen, you can write smaller or use 
another sheet of paper. Mechanical 
calculators and computers are not so 
flexible. 

If you set up a calculator for 
numbers of the form nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn, 
for example, an intermediate result of 
1 million is hopelessly damaged. 
There is no place to put the digit in 
the millions place. This problem is 
called overflow. There are calculators 
with 20 or 30 digits or even more, but 
you can't really solve the problem this 
way. Long calculations continually re¬ 
quire you to copy an intermediate 
result from the calculator's dials back 
onto the keys in order to shift it to the 
left or the right to accommodate the 
overflow. The copying process is 
error-prone and tedious for those 
who do it. (Originally, these people 
were called “computers.") 

Very small numbers in this format 
also suffer. Numbers smaller than 1 

( continued ) 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 223 







PARANOIA 


one-millionth are lost entirely. They 
underflow to zero. Even numbers as 
large as 1 one-thousandth lose most 
of their significant digits. Only 3 of the 
12 digits of precision initially provided 
remain. 

When overflow and underflow prob¬ 
lems arise in hand calculations, and 
even in many computer applications 


that have tight constraints on hard¬ 
ware and timing, you can solve them 
by rescaling the numbers—multiplying 
or dividing them by 10, 100, or 1000— 
to bring the number back into view. 
Naturally, you must keep track of each 
scaling operation you perform so that 
you can readjust the final answer 
properly. 


What do you get when you cross 
1200 baud, free on-line time, 
and extra features at a price Hayes 
can’t match? 


Data Rate? 

The MultiModem 
gives you a choice— 
either 1200 or 300 bits 
per second. So you can 
go on-line with the 
information utilities. 
Check out bulletin 
boards. Dial into corpo¬ 
rate mainframes. Swap 
files with friends. 

On-Line Time? 

With the Multi- 
Modem you get 
CompuServe’s 
DemoPak, a free two- 
hour demonstration of 
their service, and up to 
seven more free hours 
if you subscribe. You 
also get a $50 credit 
towards NewsNet’s 
business newsletter 
service. 

Features & Price? 

Of course, the 
MultiModem gives you 
automatic dial, answer, 
and disconnect. Gives 
you the Hayes- 
compatibility you need 
to support popular 
communications soft¬ 
ware programs like 
Crosstalk, Data Cap¬ 
ture, our own MultiCom 
PC, and dozens of 
others. Gives you a 
two-year warranty, 
tops in the industry. 


MultiModem. 


But Better? 

Yes. The Multi- 
Modem gives you fea¬ 
tures the Hayes 
Smartmodem 1200™ 
can’t match. Features 
like dial-tone and busy- 
signal detection for 
more accurate dialing 
and redialing. Like a 
battery-backed mem¬ 
ory for six phone num¬ 
bers. All at a retail price 
of just $549—com¬ 
pared to $699 for the 
Smartmodem. 

What do you get? 
The new MultiModem, 
from Multi-Tech Sys¬ 
tems. Isn’t this the 
answer you’ve been 
looking for? 


For the name of 
your local distributor, 
write Multi-Tech Sys¬ 
tems, Inc., 82 Second 
Avenue S.E., New 
Brighton, MN 55112. 
Or call us at 
(612) 631-3550. 



Inquiry 227 


Trademarks ~ MultiModem MultiCom 
PC Multi-Tech Systems. Inc —Compu¬ 
Serve CompuServe Information Services 
an H &R Block company—NewsNet 
NewsNet Inc —Crosstalk Microstul 
Inc —Data Capture Southeastern Soft¬ 
ware—Smartmodem Hayes Microcom¬ 
puter Products Inc 


Multi Tech (8) 

Systems 

The right answer every time. 


You must also check to see if this 
problem arises at every possible 
place, although such checking makes 
every program longer and more com¬ 
plicated. This high cost of being ex¬ 
tra careful must be weighed against 
the fact that the unchecked version 
works most of the time. In fact, you 
may have tested the unchecked version 
with thousands of cases and consider 
it completely debugged. 

In principle, if you know enough 
about the numbers that arise, you can 
build the rescaling shifts into your 
procedure so that they don't take any 
extra effort during the calculation 
itself. This can save up to two-thirds 
of the time that floating-point calcula¬ 
tions take. John von Neumann, often 
called the father of computing, held 
the view that such a priori analysis 
was the proper approach. He saw no 
need for floating point. However, 
most programmers now agree that 
the analysis required is far too costly 
and error-prone to ignore floating¬ 
point hardware. 

Scientific Notation 

As researchers and scientists have 
probed the further reaches of our 
world, they have developed scientific 
notation to express very large and 
very small numbers with equal preci¬ 
sion. For example, 

602,300,000,000,000 

becomes 6.023 x 10 14 while 

0.000,000,000,000,006,624 

becomes 6.624 x 10" 15 . The preci¬ 
sion or uncertainty figures for these 
numbers look very different until you 
express them in scientific notation: 
5.0 x 10 10 for the first versus 
5.0 x 10~ 18 for the second. 

When you consider imprecise 
numbers, it is easy to become con¬ 
fused between absolute uncertainty 
and relative uncertainty—relative to 
the size of the value involved. The 
relative uncertainty here is referred to 
as "half a unit-in-the-last-place" or "Zi 
ulp." Since we want computers to 
cope quickly and precisely with a 
wide range of numbers, we adapt the 

( continued) 








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Inquiry I 


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OTHER INFORMATION: 602 867 9897 


Oss^=e^_J Frss shipping is on UPS ground only. 

Sand cashier's check or money order.all other checks will 

delay shipping two weeks. 

Prices & availability subject to change without notice. 


PARANOIA 


scientific notation to the task. You 
don't need to store the "x 10” part 
because it doesn't change between 
various numbers, so you represent 
each number with a fractional signifi- 
cand and a whole-number exponent. 

The rescaling hasn't gone away. The 
"exponent” is the variable in which 
rescaling operations note their ad¬ 
justments. As you might expect, ex¬ 
ponents are represented and used in 
different ways—each with its own par¬ 
ticular problems—and each number is 
rescaled automatically after each 
operation to eliminate any leading 
zeros and to preserve the maximum 
number of significant digits. 

We use decimal notation (radix 10) 
for numbers, but computers usually 
use binary notation (radix 2) to match 
their memory and logic-circuit com¬ 
ponents. In binary you can, for exam¬ 
ple, use a significand between Vi and 
1. that is, between 1-over-the-radix 
and 1. Some computers use hexadec¬ 
imal (radix 16) instead; their signifi- 
cands can lie between V\ 6 and 1. Radix 
2 packs the most range and precision 
into any given word (the number of 
bits devoted to representing a 
number). Radix 10 is also very useful 
because there are no errors introduced 
in moving ordinary decimal numbers 
into the computer. There are errors, 
but there are no new errors. 

If your computer uses six decimal 
digits of precision, you have a pretty 
good idea of what happens to num¬ 
bers like Zi . However many digits you 
type, the most precise estimate you 
can ever get is 0.333,333. This con¬ 
tains a small error—only X A ulp—but 
this error is inherently present for 
such fractions in any floating-point 
notation. 

There are systems for maintaining 
rational numbers that avoid the prob¬ 
lem of precision as long as possible, 
at a high cost in size and speed. They 
keep two whole numbers to represent 
a fraction— 1 and 3 here—and save the 
division for later. Thus, if A is later 
multiplied by 3, the threes cancel and 
the answer is exactly 1. Unfortunate¬ 
ly, in long calculations both of these 
numbers grow unreasonably large all 
too rapidly. Unless your need for high 


precision is very great, this method is 
uneconomical. 

If you multiply 0.333,333 times 3, 
0.999,999 is as close to 1 as you can 
get. given the round-off error of 1 ulp. 
Sometimes you can accept answers 
within several ulps of the best possi¬ 
ble answer. In this case you must ac¬ 
cept the 0.999,999 result if you're go¬ 
ing to use floating point; but, even 
here, 0.999,998 is clearly unaccept¬ 
able because we can do better. 

Round or Chop? 

Some computers offer you the choice 
of rounding off or chopping (trun¬ 
cating) the result of each calculation. 
Rounding off preserves an extra Vi ulp 
of precision in each step. If the 
numbers are all positive, rounding off 
avoids the systematic underestimating 
error that truncation introduces. 

This is an important matter. For ex¬ 
ample, the Wall Street lournal reported 
on November 8. 1983 (page 37). that 
the Vancouver Stock Exchange main¬ 
tains a stock index rather like the Dow 
lones average. It began with a 
nominal value of 1,000.000 and was 
recalculated after each recorded 
transaction. At each stage, the value 
was calculated to five decimal places, 
but the last two were truncated. 

The exchange found that after 22 
months of operation, with about 2800 
transactions per working day, the 
index had fallen to the 520 range 
while stock prices were reaching new 
highs. Investigation showed that all 
those lost fractions of thousandths of 
a point had mounted up to a major 
inaccuracy. 

The solution the exchange planned 
was to round off instead of chop. If 
this was done in the usual way—01 to 
49 round down, 50 to 99 round up- 
then a consistent error still remains. 
The error is only one percent as large 
as it was and tends to inflate rather 
than deflate the index, so the ex¬ 
change might even consider it an ad¬ 
vantage. This new error is that while 
49 of the values round down and one 
stays the same. 50 of them round up. 

The point is that even tiny errors, 
when they all go the same way. can 

( continued ) 


226 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 






































































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Inquiry 96 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 227 














PARANOIA 


do serious damage to numerical 
results. The Paranoia benchmark 
checks your arithmetic to see whether 
rounding is done correctly if at all. 

Guard Digits 

Round-off errors are unavoidable. 
These errors are not mistakes in the 
process but the inevitable result of re¬ 
stricting the width of floating-point 


numbers. A carefully built arithmetic 
system can round meticulously when¬ 
ever approximation is required. How¬ 
ever, in order to round correctly extra 
(guard) digits are needed temporari¬ 
ly in the course of ordinary calcu¬ 
lations. 

Guard digits reduce error. In a four¬ 
digit system you may need five or 
more digits to maintain accuracy un¬ 


til the result is rescaled. For example, 

I. 144 x 10 1 minus 8.336 x 10° really 
needs five digits. Without the extra 
digit this simple subtraction suffers an 
error of 4 to 6 ulps, a serious defect 
that makes numeric programming 
even more difficult and error-prone. 
To illustrate: with the guard digit, 11.44 
minus 8.336 yields 03.104, which 
results in an answer after rescaling of 
3.104 x 10°; without the guard digit, 

II. 44 minus 8.33 (if truncated) yields 
03.11 for a result of 3.110 x 10° and 
11.44 minus 8.34 (if rounded off) 
yields 03.10 for a result of 3.100 x 10°. 

The need for guard digits becomes 
quite clear. What about your com¬ 
puter? Often the specific details of the 
arithmetic used on a given computer 
are known only to its designers. Yet 
they are important to programmers 
and other users who want to get 
good, precise, accurate answers. 

Professor William Kahan at the Uni¬ 
versity of California at Berkeley wrote 
Paranoia for just this reason. Paranoia 
checks many of the arithmetic details 
of your computer. For each aspect 
that is not handled in the best way, 
Paranoia reports what sort of difficulty 
will ensue from its use. 

The full Paranoia program is some 
700 lines of BASIC. Listings 1 and 2 
show an extract sufficient to test for 
the use of a guard digit in addition 
and subtraction. If some part of the 
routine seems confusing, you may 
find it helpful to try a pencil-and- 
paper example with a four-digit sys¬ 
tem like the one above. These pro¬ 
grams were simplified from the Pascal 
translation of Paranoia by B. A. 
Wichmann of the National Physical 
Laboratory in England. The full pro¬ 
gram guards itself against many (rare) 
problems that might possibly arise. 
Full Paranoia also rechecks critical cal¬ 
culations by a second method, just to 
be sure. 

Test Your Calculator 

You can use essentially the same 
guard-digit procedure to test your 
pocket calculator. Without checking 
for radix, etc., the results of two sim¬ 
ple expressions will signal the 

( continued ) 


IEEE Arithmetic and 
Paranoia Availability 


T he IEEE has specified a particularly 
careful floating-point arithmetic 
intended to avoid the worst problems 
of the older arithmetics used on com¬ 
puters. One committee (p754) de¬ 
signed a very specific binary floating¬ 
point arithmetic with three sizes of 
numbers. A second working group 
(p854) relaxed some of those specifica¬ 
tions to permit different sizes of 
numbers and different radixes to be 
used. These IEEE arithmetics are so 
good that Paranoia finds no fault with 
them at all. 

An example of IEEE arithmetic is the 
way it avoids the problem of more 
numbers rounding up than down (50 
versus 49): it rounds numbers ending 
in 50 up only half the time, i.e., when 
the previous digit is odd. The rest of 
the time, the numbers round down. For 
this reason, the normal IEEE rounding 
mode is called round-to-even. 

The drafts of the IEEE specifications 
are highly technical and quite compact. 
The dozen or so pages require careful 
reading and often some deliberate 
studying to fully comprehend. Still, that 
task is rewarding to those who seek to 
achieve numerical results of the highest 
quality with their programs. 

If you would like a copy of the IEEE 
p754 (binary) or p854 (binary and 
decimal) drafts, you may write to the 
author (IEEE p854 Mailings. U-76 
UCSF. San Francisco. CA 94143). The 
full Paranoia test program will also be 
available, on floppy disk, for a distribu¬ 
tion charge of $15. The author also has 
order forms for the disk. The floppy 
formats of the Paranoia disk will in¬ 
clude at least the PC-DOS 9-sector 
5^-inch double-sided format. A page 


or two of documentation will help you 
run the program. 

The second, corrected release of 
Paranoia in MS-BASIC should be avail¬ 
able by this issue's cover date. Versions 
in FORTRAN and Pascal are also ex¬ 
pected to be ready. Although the 
author of the Paranoia program, Pro¬ 
fessor William Kahan. is a key member 
of the IEEE Computer Society commit¬ 
tees, the IEEE does not guarantee the 
program in any way. 

If you request these test programs, 
you will be asked to assist Professor 
Kahan and Mr. Karpinski by reporting 
back the results you get when you use 
them. Please send us your results tor 
any system that is either commercial¬ 
ly available or interesting in its own 
right. You may copy the test program 
freely, maintaining its copyright notice, 
and pass it on to your friends. We 
would appreciate their results as well. 

When you run Paranoia, you will get 
several pages of messages about the 
details of the arithmetic. So far results 
have been collected on more than six 
different BASIC systems, but some of 
these results are already obsolete. 
Perhaps you can help us to bring them 
up-to-date. We are especially interested 
in hearing about any errors you may 
discover in the tests themselves. We 
would also like to hear of any problems 
you have running or interpreting the 
tests, although we do not promise any¬ 
thing but our thanks in return. 

A benchmark of this complexity may 
take years to reach its full value to the 
computing community. When enough 
arithmetics have been tested to make 
the results interesting, the authors will 
try to publish them. 


228 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 





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PARANOIA 


Listing I: A Microsoft BASIC program to test for the presence of a guard digit 
in subtraction. Note: fpwidth is the smallest number formed by multiplying one 
by the powers of the radix. If is calculated by successive multiplications, until the 
product when added to 1.0 no longer gives an exact result. (Width is a 
Microsoft BASIC reserved word and cannot be used as the variable name.) 

10 ’ Guard — Test if add/subtract has a guard digit 

20 ’ 

30 One 
40 Half 

50 Zero 
60 MinusOne 

70 ’ 

80 ’ variables: 

90 ’ 

100 ’ Radix 
110 ’ Precision 
120 ’ 

130 ’ 

140 ’ fpwidth 
150 ’ Wide 
160 ’ 

170 ’ UlpOne 
180 ' UlpRadix 
190 ’ 

200 ’ OneMinus 
210 ’ RadixMinus 
220 ’ 

230 ’ s, t, u 
240 ’ x, y, z 
250 ’ 

260 ' 

270 ’ Find a Wide so big that adding one does not change it by one 
280 ' 

290 Wide = One 
300 
310 
320 
330 
340 
350 
360 
370 
380 
390 

400 ’ Find the radix (or number base) as the minimum increase in Wide 
410 ’ Remember that Wide is just large enough that the units place 
420 ’ is not represented, so a one in the last represented place 
430 ’ (the tens place, for decimal) is exactly the radix itself. 

440 ’ Try it by hand. 

450 ’ 

460 y = One 
470 ’ 

480 Radix = Wide + y ’ No change on first addition 

490 y = y + y ' So double y 

500 Radix = Radix - Wide ’ Until some change happens 
510 * 

520 IF Radix = Zero THEN 480 ’ The change is the radix 
530 ’ 

540 PRINT “Radix = Radix 
550 ’ 

560 ’ 


Wide = Wide 
x = Wide 


= x 

= y 


Wide 

One 

Wide 

One 


Double it until it grows so large that 
Adding one does not change it or 
(with rounding) changes it by 2 
So the difference is zero or 2 
And this becomes + / - one 


IF ( MinusOne + ABS( z ) ) 


Zero THEN 310 


= 1.0 Floating-point constants 

= 0.5 

= 0.0 
= - 1.0 


Calculated floating-point radix 
Significant digits in base Radix 

Precision 

Radix (or Radix “ Precision) 

First estimate of fpwidth 

Unit in last place of just less than one 
Radix * UlpOne 

One - UlpOne calculated with care 

Radix - UlpRadix 

Working variables 


230 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 












PARANOIA 



570 

Find the precision in Radix digits 


580 



590 

Precision = Zero 


600 

fpwidth = One 


610 



620 

Precision = Precision + One ’ Count the digits 


630 

fpwidth = fpwidth * Radix ’ And increase fpwidth 

640 

y = fpwidth + One ’ Until adding one 

650 



660 

IF ( y - fpwidth) = One THEN 620 ’ 

Is imprecise 

670 



680 

PRINT “Precision = Precision 


690 



700 

PRINT “fpwidth = fpwidth 


710 



720 

UlpOne = One / fpwidth 


730 ’ 



740 

PRINT “Closest relative separation found is UlpOne = 

UlpOne 

750 ’ 



760 

OneMinus = ( Half - UlpOne ) + Half 


770 

UlpRadix = Radix * UlpOne 


780 ’ 



790 

RadixMinus = Radix - One 


800 

RadixMinus = ( RadixMinus - UlpRadix ) + One 


810 ’ 



820 

x = One - UlpOne 


830 

y = One - OneMinus 


840 

z = One - x 


850 ’ 



860 

s = Radix - UlpRadix 


870 

t = Radix - RadixMinus 


880 

u = Radix - s 


890 ' 



900 

IF y = UlpOne THEN 920 


910 

GOTO 960 


920 

IF t = UlpRadix AND u = UlpRadix THEN 940 


930 

GOTO 960 


940 

PRINT “Add/subtract has a guard digit as it should.” 


950 

GOTO 980 


960 

PRINT “Add/subtract lacks guard digit, cancellation obscured.” 

970 1 



980 

END ’ Guard 



Listing 2: 

Pascal program to test for the presence of a guard digit in 


subtraction. 




program Guard: 

{ Test if add/subtract has a guard digit 

} 

const 




One 

= 1.0; 

{ Floating-point constants 

i 

Half 

= 0.5; 



Zero 

= 0.0; 



MinusOne 

= -1.0; 



var 




Radix 

: real; 

{ Calculated floating-point radix 

} 

Precision 

: real; 

{ Significant digits in base Radix 

} 



{ Precision 

} 

Width 

: real; 

{ Radix (or Radix * Precision) 

} 

Wide 

: real; 

{ First estimate of Width 

i 

( continued ) 


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FEBRUARY 1985 • BYT E 231 













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PARANOIA 


UlpOne 

: real; 

{ Unit in last place of just less than one 

} 

UlpRadix 

: real; 

{ Radix x UlpOne 

} 

OneMinus 

; real, 

{ One - UlpOne calculated with care 

> 

RadixMinus 

: real; 

{ Radix - UlpRadix 

> 

s, t, u 

: real; 

{ Working variables 


x, y, z 

: real; 




begin {Guard} 

{ Find a Wide so big that adding one does not change it by one. } 


Wide : = One: 
repeat 


Wide : = Wide + Wide; { Double it until it grows so large that } 

x : = Wide + One; { Adding one does not change it or } 

{ (with rounding) changes it by 2 } 

y : = x - Wide; { So the difference is zero or 2 } 


z : = y - One { And this becomes + / - one } 

until ( MinusOne + abs( z ) ) > = Zero; 


{ Find the radix (or number base) as the minimum increase in Wide } 

{ Remember that Wide is just large enough that the units place } 

{ is not represented, so a one in the last represented place } 

{ (the tens place, for decimal) is exactly the radix itself. } 

{ Try it by hand. } 


y = One; 
repeat 

Radix : = Wide + y; {No change on first addition } 

y : = y + y; { So double y } 

Radix ; = Radix - Wide { Until some change happens } 


until Radix < > Zero; { The change is the radix! } 

writeln( 'Radix = ’, Radix ); 

{ Find the precision in Radix digits } 

Precision : = Zero; 

Width : = One; 
repeat 

Precision : = Precision + One; 

Width : = Width * Radix; 
y = Width + One 

until ( y - Width ) < > One; 

writeln( 'Precision = ', Precision ); 

writeln( ‘Width = ’, Width ); 

UlpOne : = One / Width; 

writeln( ‘Closest relative separation found is UlpOne = ’, UlpOne ); 


{ Count the digits } 

{ And increase Width } 

{ Until adding one } 

{ Is imprecise } 


OneMinus = ( Half - UlpOne ) + Half; 

UlpRadix = Radix * UlpOne; 

( continued ) 


232 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 




























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FEBRUARY 1985 ‘BYTE 233 







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234 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 331 























PARANOIA 


RadixMinus : = Radix -One; 

RadixMinus = ( RadixMmus - UlpRadix ) + One; 

x : = One - UlpOne; 

y = One - OneMinus; 

z = One - x; 

s = Radix - UlpRadix; 

t : = Radix - RadixMinus; 
u : = Radix - s; 

if (y = UlpOne) and (z = UlpOne) and 
(t = UlpRadix) and (u = UlpRadix) 
then 

writeln( ‘Add/subtract has a guard digit as it should.’ ) 
else 

writeln( ‘Add/subtract lacks guard digit, cancellation obscured.’ ) 
end {Guard}. 


presence or absence of a guard digit. 
If their results are equal, the guard 
digit is present. Otherwise it is prob¬ 
ably not. Those expressions are 

1 - ( 9 / 27 - 3 ) 


and 

1/2 - ( 9 / 27 * 3 ) + 1/2 

For four-function calculators without 
parentheses or memory, you can use 


- 9 / 27 * 3 + 1 
and 

- 9 / 27 * 3 + .5 + .5 

A smaller test in Pascal could be: 

if (- 9 / 27 * 3 + 1 ) = 

(- 9/27 * 3 + .5 + .5) 
then writeln( Add/subtract has a 
guard digit.’ ) 

else writeln( Add/subtract lacks 
guard digit.’ ) 

Conclusion 

Paranoia is an unusual benchmark: it 
tests the quality of your software, not 
just its speed. Most common com¬ 
puter arithmetics have a half-dozen or 
more flaws that Paranoia finds, report¬ 
ing what kinds of calculations are 
harmed by them. Its use can be highly 
rewarding to those who seek to 
achieve very accurate, precise, numer¬ 
ical results from their programs. ■ 


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Inquiry 269 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 235 




























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Inquiry 365 


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238 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 221 






























































SCIENCE 


MODELING 

MASS-ACTION 

KINETICS 

by Alan Curtis 


I n the future, microcomputers may have a substantial role 
in major scientific computations 


AT THE UNITED KINGDOM Atomic 
Energy Research Establishment. Har¬ 
well, we have assembled scientific and 
technological applications of our FAC¬ 
SIMILE reaction-kinetics program. All 
can be run on one mainframe or an¬ 
other, but for the purposes of this ar¬ 
ticle I have selected a few of those 
that now run on an IBM PC with 512K 
bytes of RAM (random-access read/ 
write memory). 

Like other simulation modelers such 
as DYNAMO, FACSIMILE facilitates 
the calculation of a set of differential 
equations that describe the con¬ 
tinuous evolution of a system from a 
known initial configuration and then 
flexibly formats the output. 

Simulation models solve problems 
repeatedly and carry out thorough 
statistical analyses to find the best fit 
among parameters. For such work, 
whether the microcomputer is prac¬ 
tical depends on your point of view. 
A fairly large program that takes, say, 
three minutes on an IBM mainframe 
might well run all night on the PC, pro¬ 
vided you use an 8087 math copro¬ 
cessor; without it, running time would 
probably be about 10 times longer 


(this is a guess—we haven't checked 
it out). 

Let's take a look at several examples 
of how simulation models can be 
used. 

Uranium from Seawater? 

Seawater contains uranium, an ex¬ 
tremely valuable fuel, at an extreme¬ 
ly low concentration. Suppose we 
want to extract the uranium. The 
question is whether an economically 
viable extraction process exists. We 
might try pumping the seawater 
through an ion-exchange column, a 
tube tightly packed with minute 
spheres of a resin that preferentially 
absorbs uranium ions from solution 
and replaces them with ions of an¬ 
other metal. When sufficient water 
has been pumped through, the col- 


A lan Curtis leads the Applied Mathematics 
Group in the Computer Science and Systems 
Division at the U.K. Atomic Energy Research 
Establishment, Harwell. He is a graduate of 
Cambridge and a former lecturer at the 
University of Sheffield. He can be reached 
at AERE, Harwell, Didcot, Oxfordshire 
0X11 ORA, England. 


umn is removed and cut up. and or¬ 
dinary chemical means remove the 
uranium (now at high concentration in 
the resin) for further processing. Ob¬ 
viously the value of the recovered 
uranium must offset the costs of 
manufacturing the resin and the 
tubes, of the pumping power, and of 
the postprocessing to recover the 
uranium from the resin. 

A feasibility study of the problem 
called for a simulation model because 
the rate coefficients for the absorp¬ 
tion of uranium by the resin were not 
known. Experiments removed sup¬ 
posedly identical ion-exchange col¬ 
umns at different times, pumped dif¬ 
ferent rates of seawater, and analyzed 
uranium contents at various points 
along the columns. Parameter-fitting 
options might have determined the 
best fit for these experimental results. 

As it turned out, variations in prop¬ 
erties, mainly the density of packing 
of the resin from one column to 
another, and even along the length of 
a single column, invalidated the 
model, which assumed a single 
uniform column. A more complicated 

( continued ) 


FEBRUARY 1985 ‘BYTE 239 








MODELING 


model might have involved some of 
the variability, but the experiments 
had shown that the whole process 
was not likely to be economical 
anyway 

Such negative results are not fail¬ 
ures in scientific investigations. On the 
contrary we understand far better the 
requirements for the simulation if we 
decide to pursue it again. 

A modified model, now used for 
demonstration purposes, contains 
parameter values chosen to exhibit 
significant saturation. (There are other 
ways of solving the problem of model¬ 
ing an ideal ion-exchange column if 
you know that saturation is negligible.) 

To model the behavior of the col¬ 
umn, we divided its length into 20 
equal-size sections. One array of 20 
variables represents the concentra¬ 
tion of uranium in the seawater in 
each section, a second array 


represents the concentration in the 
resin, and a third array checks for 
saturation by monitoring available ab¬ 
sorption sites in the resin. The simula¬ 
tion models the flow of seawater by 
passing material from one element of 
the array to the next at a rate reflect¬ 
ing the time it takes for the water to 
move the length of a section. 

The first element receives material 
with the concentration in the incom¬ 
ing water; the last element sends 
material to a "waste" variable. The 
simulation of the exchange process 
between solution and resin uses 
modeling features for chemical reac¬ 
tions; a second-order reaction be¬ 
tween corresponding elements of the 
first and third arrays represents ab¬ 
sorption, and a first-order reaction 
represents the reverse process. The 
program runs on the IBM PC in about 
5 50 seconds (compared with 2.5 sec¬ 


onds on the IBM 308IK), so that even 
a parameter-fitting run, which ex¬ 
ecutes several dozen simulation runs, 
could be done overnight on the micro. 
It is fair to say that this investigation 
could have been done on the PC from 
the beginning. 

The model provides three types of 
output: "snapshot" graphs, which 
show how the concentrations vary 
along the column at any time; "time- 
course" graphs, which illustrate how 
integrated quantities, such as the total 
uranium trapped in the resin, vary 
with time; and tables of numbers that 
give more accurate time histories of 
these integrated quantities. Figure 1 
is a snapshot graph from this prob¬ 
lem. By plotting the independent vari¬ 
able (distance along the column) 
along the y -axis and the dependent 
variables along the x-axis, a printer 
can plot graphs of any length. Points 
X represent the concentration of 
uranium in solution, multiplied by 
100,000,000; points Y represent con¬ 
centration in the resin, multiplied by 
10,000; points S represent available 
sites, multiplied by 10,000. 

Starting up a 
Chemical Reactor 

In a 1981 thesis for Imperial College, 
London, I. T. Cameron proposed this 
chemical-engineering problem. It is 
much simpler than the others de¬ 
scribed here, but in practice it had 
proved difficult to solve. 

Initially a chemical reactor contains 
neutral gas. A pump starts to supply 
liquid feedstock through an inlet 
valve, compressing the gas and re¬ 
ducing the flow from the pump 
because of back pressure. A chemical 
reaction takes place in the vessel, and 
product mixed with unused feed¬ 
stock, driven by the gas pressure and 
the liquid head, flows out through an 
outlet valve. In time the system 
reaches a steady state, but the main 
focus of the simulation is the start-up 
transient. Results of interest include 
the peak gas pressure and tempera¬ 
ture (for vessel design) and the loss 
of unused feedstock and substandard 
product. The model includes the ef- 

(continued) 


PLOTTING PARAMETERS FOR GRAPH 
INDEPENDENT VARIABLE :DIST 

STREAM 2 
(PLOTTED 

VERTICAL LY ) 


DEPENDENT VARIABLES (PLOTTED HORIZONTALLY) 
X SCALE 1.0000D-03 X 

Y SCALE 1.0000D-04 Y 

S SCALE 1.00000-04 S 

0 0.5 


1 

1.000D*00 

1 Y 1 

1 


1 s 

1 

X 1 

3.0 0 0D * 0 0 

1 1 

1 Y 1 

1 

1 


1 

1 S X 

1 

1 

1 

5.0000*00 

1 1 




1 

7.0 0 0D♦0 0 

1 1 

1 Y 1 

1 

1 


1 

1 S X 

1 

1 

9.000D+00 

1 1 

1 Y 1 

1 


1 

1 s 

1 

1 

1.1000*01 

1 Y 1 

1 


1 xs 

1 

1.3000*01 

1 l 

1 Y 1 

1 

1 


IX s 

1 

1.5000*01 

1 1 





1.7000*01 

1 1 

1 Y 1 

1 

1 


X 1 s 

1 

1.900D+01 

1 1 

1 Y 1 

1 


X 1 s 

1 

2.100D + 01 

1 Y 1 

1 


X 1 s 

1 

2.3000*01 

1 Y 1 

1 

1 


X 1 s 

1 

2.5000*01 

1 1 

1 



1 

2.7000*01 

1 1 

1 Y 1 

t 

1 


1 

X 1 s 

1 

2. 900D*01 

1 l 

1 Y 1 

1 


X 1 s 

1 

3.100D*01 

1 Y 1 

1 


X 1 s 

1 

3.300D + 01 

1 1 

1 Y 1 

I 

1 

X 

1 

1 s 

1 

3.500D*01 

1 1 

1 


1 

1 

3.7000*01 

1 1 

1 Y 1 

1 

X 1 

I s 

1 

3.9000*01 

1 1 

1 Y 1 

1 

X 1 

1 s 

1 


Figure 1: A snapshot graph from the ion-exchange-column problem. 


240 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 





















Iffrf tin jil 


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than one of these... 


You should be using this. 

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Inquiry 223 


FEBRUARY 1985 ‘BYTE 241 
























MODELING 


PLOTTING 

PARAMETERS 

FOP GRAPH 

STPEAM 1 

INDEPENDENT VAPIA8LE 

: TIME 

(PLOTTED VERTICALLY) 

DEPENDENT 

VAPIABL ES 

(PLOTTED HORIZONTALLY): 

CA 

SCALE 

2.40000+00 

A 

CB 

SCALE 

1.5000D-02 

B 

CPI 

SCALE 

2.40000 + 00 

P 

FI 

scale 

1.2000D+02 

1 

F 2 

SCALE 

1.2000D + 02 

2 


0 0.5 1 

0.0000+00 
5.00OD-03 

1 . 00CD-02 
1.500D-02 

2 . 000D-02 
2.50CD-02 
3.000D-02 
3.50CD-02 
4.0CCD-02 

4.5000- 02 
5.000D-02 
5.500D-02 
6.000D-02 
6.50 CD - 0 2 
7.C0CD-02 

7.5000- 02 
8 . OOOD-02 
6.50CD-02 
o.000D-02 

9.5000- 02 
1.C0CD-01 
1.05CD-01 
1.100D-01 
1.15CD-01 
1.20CD-01 
1.250D-01 
1.3C0D-01 
1.35CD-01 
1 . -00D-01 
1 . -50D-01 

1.5000- 01 

1.5500- 01 
1 .6C0D-01 
1.6500-01 
1.700D-01 

1 . -5CD-01 
1.8000-01 
1.85CD-01 
1. a C CD - 01 

1. «50D-01 
2.0000-01 
2.05CD-01 
2.1000-01 
2.1500-01 
2.2000 - 01 
2.250D-01 
2.300D-01 

2.3500- 01 

2 . wOOD-01 

2 . -500 -01 

2.5000- 01 

2.5500- 01 
2.6000-01 

2. ©5CD- 01 
2.7000-01 
2.7500-01 
2.8C0D-01 

2 . e50D-01 

2.900D-01 
2.9500 - 01 
3.000D-01 

3 . C50D-01 
3.1000-01 
3.150D-01 
3.200D-01 
3.2500-01 
3.3C0D-01 

3.3500- 01 
3.iOCD-Ol 

3. W50D-01 
3.500D-01 
3.550D-01 
3.600D-01 
3.650D-01 
3.-COD-01 
3."500-01 
3.8000 - 01 
3.8500 - 01 
3.900D-01 
3.350D-01 
4.0000-01 


- 1-1 - 

I 1 
I 1 
I 1 B 
I 1 

- 1-1 - 

I 1 A 
I 1 A 
I 1A 
I 1 

- A1- 


2 

P 2 
P 2 
P 2 
--P-2-- 
P 2 
P 2 
2 


B 

- -3 ■ 
B 
B 


A1 
A I 1 
A I 1 
A I 1 

A-II- 

I 1 
I 1 
I 1 
I 1 

-II- 

I 1 
1 
1 


1 

1 B 
1 B 
1 B 


- -1-B 
IB 
1 
1 
B 1 


P A 
- PA- - 
PA 
P 
AP 


- -B- 
B 1 
B 1 



1 

2 1 AP 

t 

B 1 1 

1 









1 

2 1 A 

P 

1 

3 1 1 

1 


1 

2 1 A 

P 

1 

B 1 1 

1 


1 

2 1 A 

P 

1 B 

1 1 

1 


1 

2 1 A 

P 

1 3 

1 1 

1 









1 

2 1 A 

P 

1 B 

1 1 

1 


1 

2 A 

P 

1 B 

1 1 

1 


1 

2 A 

P 

1 3 

1 1 

1 


1 

2 A 

P 

t B 

1 1 

1 









1 

2 A 1 

P 

1 B 

1 1 

1 


1 

2 A 1 

P 

B 

1 1 

1 


1 

2 A 1 

P 

B 

1 1 

1 


I 

2 A 1 

PB 1 

1 1 

1 









I 

2 1 


P 1 

1 t 

1 


1 

2 1 

BP 1 

1 I 

1 


1 

2 1 

BP » 

1 1 

1 


1 

A2 1 

BP 1 

1 1 

1 









1 

A 2 1 

B 

P 

1 1 

1 


1 

A 2 1 

B 

P 

1 1 

1 


1 

A 2 1 

3 

P 

1 1 

1 


1 

A 2 1 

B 

P 

1 1 

1 









1 

A 2 

B 

1 P 

1 1 

1 


1 

A 2 

B 

1 P 

1 1 

1 


1 

A 2 

B 

1 P 

1 1 

1 


1 

A 2 

B 

1 P 

1 1 

1 









1 

A 1 2 

B 

1 P 

1 1 

1 


1 

A 1 2 

B 

1 P 

1 1 

1 


1 

A 1 2 

B 

1 P 

1 1 

1 


1 

A 1 2 

B 

1 P 

1 1 

1 









1 

A 1 2 B 


1 P 

1 1 

1 


1 

A 1 2 B 


1 P 

1 1 

1 


1 

A 1 2 B 


1 P 

1 1 

1 


1 

A 1 2 B 


1 P 

1 1 

1 









feet of pressure on inlet and outlet 
flow rates as well as the progress of 
the reaction, the depth of the liquid, 
and the thermodynamics of the gas. 

Output consists of time-course 
graphs and tables of numbers. The 
graphical output (see figure 2) illus¬ 
trates an interesting phenomenon 
that occurs fairly often. There is a long 
transient before the approach of the 
steady state, but the initial transient 
is very fast. To study the initial part ef¬ 
fectively, it is necessary to plot many 
points at small time intervals. Graphs, 
therefore, have the independent 
variable (time in this case) plotted 
downward and the dependent vari¬ 
ables plotted from left to right; thus 
(with continuous paper) there is no 
limit to the length of the plotted 
graph. However, if the PC screen dis¬ 
plays the graph as it is produced, only 
about 2 5 lines are shown at a time, 
so a printer is essential. 

Death of a Star 

When a typical "main sequence" star 
has been burning and radiating 
energy away for a few billion years, it 
has transmuted all of its original 
lighter elements into carbon and oxy¬ 
gen and must enter a carbon-burning 
phase. During this time, the internal 
pressure needed to support the star's 
weight against its own gravitational at¬ 
traction has required high density and 
temperature, which in turn make the 
star opaque to radiation. 

According to Planck's law, the star 
radiates at a rate determined by its 
surface area and temperature. There¬ 
fore, when the star's lighter elements 
are exhausted and its energy from 
nuclear reactions becomes inade¬ 
quate to support its weight, it starts 
to contract under gravity; this in¬ 
creases its internal temperature until 
it reaches about 1 billion degrees 

( continued ) 

Figure 2: A time-course graph from 
Cameron's reactor problem. A = 
concentration of feedstock ; B = 
concentration of an intermediate (on larger 
scale); P = concentration of product ; 1 = 
inlet flow rate ; 2 = outlet flow rate. 


242 B Y T E • FEBRUARY 1985 
































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FEBRUARY 1985 • BYT E 243 


















MODELING 


Generation of smog 
in urban areas is a 


complex phenomenon 
that involves numerous 


reactions among over 
100 trace gases 
in the atmosphere. 


Kelvin. This temperature is sufficient 
to cause carbon nuclei to begin fus¬ 
ing together to form heavier elements. 
This carbon-burning process supplies 
the necessary energy to make further 
gravitational contraction unnecessary 
If the star is an ordinary one—not 


too big—the temperature generates 
enough pressure to keep the star 
stable until the carbon is exhausted. 
The temperature and density do not 
rise further, and the carbon-burning 
phase takes place relatively slowly in 
conditions of hydrostatic equilibrium. 
In a more massive star, however, the 
pressure is inadequate, contraction 
continues, the temperature and den¬ 
sity continue to rise, and carbon burn¬ 
ing proceeds explosively fast; the star 
becomes a supernova. In either case, 
the phase is extremely short in rela¬ 
tion to the earlier leisurely history of 
the star; typical durations may be a 
week or two for an ordinary (less 
massive) star or about a second for 
a supernova. 

Simulations have been successful 
for both the hydrostatic and the ex¬ 
plosive carbon-burning phases. In 
both cases, the set of nuclear reac¬ 
tions is the same, but the rate coeffi¬ 


cients depend on temperature and 
density, variables that vary with time 
in a way determined by the stellar 
dynamics. To model the hydrostatic 
version, temperature and density are 
kept constant and rate coefficients are 
computed only once, at the start of 
the run. For the supernova version, 
temperature and density are defined 
as functions of time, and the rate coef¬ 
ficients are frequently recalculated 
during the run. 

The coding of the nuclear reactions, 
although they are numerous, is rela¬ 
tively easy because their structure is 
exactly that of chemical reactions. 
Protons, neutrons, neutrinos, alpha 
particles, and 36 heavier nuclides are 
simulated. 

A run of the hydrostatic version takes 
about 8200 seconds (2.3 hours) on the 
PC. compared with about 2 5 seconds 
on the IBM 308IK. This is a larger 
speed ratio than average—about 
330:1—but we may be able to improve 
the performance. The supernova ver¬ 
sion takes about 67 seconds on the 
3081, so we expect it to take about 
22,000 seconds (say. 6 hours) on the 
PC. Output consists of time-course 
graphs of the mass fractions of the 
various nuclides, plotted on loga¬ 
rithmic scales for time and for the 
mass fractions, and of tables giving 
numerical values for the mass fractions 
as functions of time. The graphs show 
clearly the stages at which the various 
nuclides are produced or used up; in 
many cases, this occurs in straight lines 
on the log-log plot, indicating mass 
fractions proportional to a (positive or 
negative) power of the time. 

Photochemical Smog 
Generation 

The generation of photochemical 
smog in urban areas is an extremely 
complex phenomenon that involves 
numerous reactions among well over 
100 trace gases in the atmosphere. 
Important elementary steps in the 
process involve the breaking of 
chemical bonds when a molecule ab¬ 
sorbs solar radiation; these steps 
switch off rapidly as sunset ap¬ 
proaches and switch on equally fast 

( continued ) 


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244 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 174 

















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FEBRUARY 1985 • B Y T E 245 




















MODELING 


at dawn. Rate coefficients also de¬ 
pend on smaller day/night variations 
such as temperature and water vapor 
content. Thus the behavior of the 
chemistry during the night is quite dif¬ 
ferent from that during the day and 
the switching processes are technical¬ 
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equation solvers to handle. 


The model of this process is by far 
the largest and most complicated of 
those described here. The model in¬ 
volves a total of 300 reactions among 
135 chemical species; the data oc¬ 
cupies about 620 lines of code. The 
model also requires larger working 
arrays than the others, but it can 
be fitted into 470K bytes of RAM. 


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Simulating 50 hours of real time (thus 
seeing how much greater the pollu¬ 
tion is on the second day than the 
first) takes about 110 seconds on the 
IBM 308IK; we are not yet able to run 
it on the PC, but we might expect a 
speed ratio similar to that for the 
astrophysical problem. It is thus at the 
limit of practicability on the PC (at pre¬ 
sent) so far as running time is con¬ 
cerned, but it is interesting that the 
model would still run faster than real 
time. Simulation of the second 24 
hours takes about one-third of the 
total time, and we would expect sub¬ 
sequent days to run at approximately 
this speed. 

Output consists mainly of time- 
course graphs, which illustrate clearly 
the buildup, with afternoon peaks and 
nighttime troughs, in the concentra¬ 
tions of the important pollutants. 

Conclusion 

I have presented only a few of the 
many scientific and engineering appli¬ 
cations that are practicable on a micro 
like the IBM PC with 512K bytes of 
RAM and an 8087 math coprocessor. 
I hope, nevertheless, that I have con¬ 
veyed a feel for what I am sure has 
a very big future—the use of micro¬ 
computers for major scientific compu¬ 
tation. ■ 


For Further Information 

For information on some specific 
microcomputer simulation modelers, 
contact: 

Atomic Energy Research 
Establishment 

Harwell, Didcot, Oxfordshire OX11 
ORA. England (FACSIMILE) 

Pugh-Roberts Associates Inc. 

5 Lee St.. Cambridge, MA 02139 
(Micro-DYNAMO) 

ACKNOWLEDGMENT 
1 would like to thank the United Kingdom 
Atomic Energy Research Establishment, 
Harwell, for permission to publish the 
material about FACSIMILE contained in 
this article; and I would also like to thank 
my colleagues Philip Sweetenham and 
Kevin McPherson for providing me with 
information about the test runs they 
executed. 


246 BYTE- FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 300 

















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FEBRUARY 1985 ‘BYTE 247 






ASYST multiple windows permit side-by-side 
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248 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 



















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FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 249 












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SCIENCE 


VIEWING 

MOLECULES WITH 
THE MACINTOSH 

by Earl J. Kirkland 


A BASIC program provides 3-D images 
of complex molecules 


RESEARCHERS HAVE GAINED valu¬ 
able insights into how molecules work 
by examining the basic physical struc¬ 
tures of the molecules, which in part 
determine their functions. Scientists 
have learned, for example, that the 
physics of electronic conduction in a 
silicon crystal is influenced by the 
basic symmetries of the crystal. 

The relative physical sizes and 
shapes of two molecules may also in¬ 
fluence the rate at which they interact 
chemically (since, for two chemicals— 
i.e., atoms or molecules—to interact, 
they must first come into contact with 
each other). This is the case with a 
particular class of biochemical sub¬ 
stances called enzymes, which are re¬ 
sponsible for controlling the rate of 
biochemical activity without them¬ 
selves being changed (i.e., they are 
biological catalysts). The size and 
shape of the enzyme molecule in¬ 
fluences which other biochemical 
substances (molecules) may bind to 
it and hence be influenced by it. 

We can gain some understanding of 
the basic functions of molecules by 
examining the size and shape of a 
given molecule, using either a real 


physical model or a computer-graph¬ 
ics representation of the molecule. 
References 1,2, and 3 give some ex¬ 
amples of graphic representations of 
molecular structure and their useful¬ 
ness in understanding molecular 
function. 

Molecules are far too small to be 
seen with optical microscopes, and 
electron microscopes are just becom¬ 
ing capable of directly imaging a few 
specialized types of molecules. Most 
of the molecular structures that we 
know today have been determined by 
X-ray diffraction studies of large 
crystals. A crystal can be thought of 
as a very large, single molecule com¬ 
posed of a small structure of a few 
atoms repeated many times. This 
repetitive nature allows researchers to 
analyze many identical molecules at 
one time and obtain a reasonable 
"signal-to-noise" ratio in the results. 


Earl J. Kirkland (Cornell University, Ithaca, 
NY 14853) holds a doctorate in applied 
physics and is a research associate at Cornell's 
School of Applied and Engineering Physics. 
His work involves computer image processing 
of electron micrographs. 


X-ray diffraction patterns cannot be 
directly interpreted but require a com¬ 
puter to digest the diffraction pattern. 
The computer outputs a sequence of 
numerical data describing the three- 
dimensional (3-D) positions of the 
atoms inside the molecule. This 
numerical data is rather difficult to 
understand without further reduction. 
Simple structures with only a few 
atoms may be intuitively visualized 
from the raw numerical data, but the 
more interesting or important struc¬ 
tures often contain hundreds of 
atoms, each with its own numerical 
coordinate (x,y,z). Intuition is inade¬ 
quate for complicated structures such 
as these. 

Before the advent of computer 
graphics, researchers had to go 
through the elaborate process of 
building 3-D models of each molecule 
for futher study. Because this molec¬ 
ular-structure data is often generated 
by a computer, it is a practical alter¬ 
native to also let the computer draw 
a 3-D perspective view of the mole¬ 
cule using computer graphics. 

Computer graphics is a powerful 

( continued ) 


Inquiry 315 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 251 







VIEWING MOLECULES 


tool for visualizing the structure of 
large molecules in three dimensions. 
Sophisticated (and expensive) com¬ 
puter hardware and software systems 
for displaying molecules and crystals 
in 3-D perspective are discussed in 
references 4 and 5. 

The Apple Macintosh has enough 
resolution and speed to draw 3-D 
perspective views of relatively large 
molecules and to rotate them in space 
(not in real time but fast enough to be 
interactive). Although not as good as 
the more sophisticated systems 
(several of which are discussed in 
references 4 and 5). the Macintosh is 
certainly less expensive and can pro¬ 
vide quite usable and educational 
results. MODEL3D, a program written 
in Microsoft Macintosh BASIC 1.0 and 
designed to run on the 128K-byte 
Mac, is capable of displaying up to 
600 atoms in three dimensions, with 
hidden-surface removal, and azimuth¬ 
al and polar rotations (these terms are 
defined below). 

Molecules 

For the purposes of this discussion, 
think of a molecule as a group of 
atoms that are bound together in a 


well-defined structure. Each molecule 
has a given number of one or more 
different types of atoms and each 
atom has a specific 3-D coordinate 
associated with it. A molecule may be 
as simple as two atoms or as com¬ 
plicated as the DNA molecule with its 
thousands of atoms. The atom-to- 
atom spacing varies from one 
molecule to the next and is deter¬ 
mined by the chemistry and physics 
of the bonds. Typical atomic spacings 
are on the order of a few angstroms 
(1 angstrom =10 -8 centimeters). 

Each atom in the molecule or crystal 
has a further substructure consisting 
of a small nucleus of positive charge 
(protons and neutrons) surrounded by 
a larger, negatively charged electron 
cloud. The outer electrons in this 
cloud form the actual bond to the 
neighboring atoms. The radius of the 
atom (i.e., the electron-cloud radius) 
varies from one type of atom to the 
next. (Typically, atomic radii are on 
the order of 1 angstrom.) This atomic 
structure may be modeled graphical¬ 
ly as a slightly fuzzy sphere whose 
radius is the radius of the electron 
cloud. The specific 3-D coordinate of 
the atom is associated with the center 



Figure 1: A perspective view of a three-dimensional object as projected onto a 
two-dimensional CRT screen. The point ( x,y.z) i represents the center of a 3-D sphere, 
and (x,z) is represents the projected screen coordinates. 


or nucleus of the atom. Therefore, to 
describe a whole molecule all you 
need is a list containing the 3-D coor¬ 
dinate and size of each atom in the 
molecule. This will be represented as 
the coordinates (x,y,z)i and atomic 

sizes (or radii) s it for i = 1,2.3. n. 

where n is the total number of atoms 
in the molecule. 

Rotation 

Once you have the list of atomic coor¬ 
dinates inside the computer, you can 
rotate the atomic structure to any 
angle prior to viewing it. In three 
dimensions there are two possible in¬ 
dependent rotations about a given 
center (or any other given point). They 
will be referred to as an azimuthal 
rotation (about the z-axis) and a polar 
rotation (about the x-axis). To 
azimuthally rotate the molecule about 
its center point (x,y,z) 0 through an 
angle <t>. you must transform each 
atomic coordinate (x,y,z)i as: 

Xi' = (Xi-Xo) cos(0) 4- (y,-y 0 )s\n(<t>) 

yl = -(x,-x o )sin(0) + (^-y 0 )cos(</>) 

and to rotate through a polar angle 
6, you must transform each atomic 
coordinate as: 

yi = i^'cos(0) + (z,-z o )sin(0) 

Zi = -i^'sin(0) + (z f -z o )cos(0) 

The computer uses the new result¬ 
ing rotated coordinates (x',y",z')i to 
calculate the 3-D perspective view of 
the molecule. For convenience you 
may define the center of rotation 
(x,y,z) 0 to be halfway between the 
minimum and maximum extent of the 
molecule (along each axis). 

3-D Perspective 

To display a molecule in 3-D on a 
computer screen, the light coming 
from the two-dimensional CRT 
(cathode-ray tube) screen must be 
made to appear as if it comes from 
a three-dimensional object (i.e., the 
molecule). One way to do this is il¬ 
lustrated in figure 1 (see also refer¬ 
ences 4 and 6). The human observer 
is in the "viewing position" at a 
distance D from the CRT screen, 
which is illustrated as a two-dimen- 


252 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 















VIEWING MOLECULES 


sional x.z plane, seen from the side. 
Projected on this "screen" is a 3-D 
molecule, of which one atom has the 
coordinates (x.y.z),. 

We then trace several light rays from 
the viewing position through the 
three-dimensional-object points. The 
points where these rays intersect the 
CRT plane is where the object should 
be placed when drawn on the CRT 
screen. By comparing similar right 
triangles formed with the viewing 
position, the y-axis, and either the 
(x.y.z)i or (x.z) is points, we can calculate 
the screen coordinates as: 

x is = DXi / (D - yi) 

and 

z is = DZi / (D - y t ) 

In practice, the leading multiplica¬ 
tive factor of D will be dropped 
because the screen coordinates will 
be rescaled later to fill the screen. The 
apparent size of each atom should 
also be scaled as above so that the 
atoms appear smaller as they get fur¬ 
ther away. 

In realistic 3-D perspective, some 
atoms will be in back of other atoms 
and hence should not be visible. This 
is the so-called "hidden-surface prob¬ 
lem." An easy, if crude, solution is to 
simply sort the atoms by depth and 
draw from the back forward, always 
overwriting each successive layer of 
atoms. When each successive atom is 
drawn it exactly overwrites the por¬ 
tion of the object that it would nor¬ 
mally obscure. This is the approach 
I have used here. 

The Program 

I have implemented the theory out¬ 
lined above in MODEL3D (listing 1). 
a program written in Microsoft BASIC 
for the Macintosh. [ Editor's note: The 
source code for MODEL3D is available for 
downloading via BYTE net Listings. The 
number is (603) 924-9820.| The pro¬ 
gram first asks for the name of the 
data file containing the atomic coor¬ 
dinates of the molecule you wish to 
draw. You can obtain this information 
from college-level chemistry or 
physics textbooks, or from the 

( continued ) 


Listing 1: The Source listing of MODEL3D. a Microsoft BASIC 1.0 program 
to draw 3-D perspective views of molecules. 

10 * *** MODEL3D.BAS *** 

20 ’ Draw a 3D perspective view of a molecule with rotation 

30 ’ For private, noncommercial use only. 

40 ’ ©E. Kirkland 4-JUL-84, added printer distortion 9-SEP-84 

50 • 

60 ’ NOTE: Remember to shrink command window to lower left 

70 ’hand corner so that the lower right side of screen is visible 
80 ’ 

90 DEFINT I - N:DEFSNG O - Z:DEFSNG A - G 
100 DIM IE(4),IP(12),X(600).Y(600),Z(600),S(600) 

110 ’ 

120 ’ Define shading bit patterns for sphere 
130 IP(0) = &H4411 :IP(1) = IP(0):IP(2) = IP(0):IP(3) = IP(0) 

140 IP(4) = &H55AA:IP(5) = IP(4):IP(6) = IP(4):IP(7) = IP(4) 

150 IP(8) = &HFFFF:IP(9) = IP(8):IP(10) = IP(8):IP(11) = IP(8) 

160 ’ 

170 ’ Ask what to do 

180 CLS:INPUT “Data file name : ’’.FILES 

190 INPUT “Azim., polar angles : ”, PHI,THETA 

200 INPUT “Viewing distance : ”.VIEWD:INPUT “Size mag. : ”,SMAG 

210 INPUT “Type 1 for printer:”,IPRINT 

220 ’ Printer distortion correction factor 

230 IF IPRINT = 1 THEN DISTORT = 1.094 ELSE DISTORT = 1! 

240 TIM# = TIMER 

250 PHI = PHI*3.14159/180!:THETA = THETA*3.14159/180! 

260 CP = COS(PHI):SP = SIN(PHI):CT = COS(THETA):ST-SIN(THETA) 

270 ’ 

280 ’ Read atomic coordinates from data file and scale 
290 OPEN FILES FOR INPUT AS #1 

300 XMIN = 1E + 25:XMAX = -XMIN:YMIN = XMIN:YMAX = XMAX 
310 ZMIN = XMIN:ZMAX = XMAX:N = 0 
320 WHILE NOT EOF(1) 

330 N = N + 1 

340 INPUT#1 ,X(N),Y(N),Z(N),S(N) 

350 IF X(N)>XMAX THEN XMAX = X(N) 

360 IF X(N)<XMIN THEN XMIN = X(N) 

370 IF Y(N)>YMAX THEN YMAX = Y(N) 

380 IF Y(N)<YMIN THEN YMIN = Y(N) 

390 IF Z(N)>ZMAX THEN ZMAX = Z(N) 

400 IF Z(N)<ZMIN THEN ZMIN=Z(N) 

410 WEND 

420 PRINT N “atomic coord.” 

430 XMIN = .5*(XMAX + XMIN):YMIN = .5*(YMIN + YMAX) 

440 ZMIN = .5*(ZMIN + ZMAX):PRINT “Rotating...” 

450 ’ 

460 ’ Rotate molecule around its center 

470 FOR 1 = 1 TO N 

480 XA = X(l) - XMIN:YA = Y(l) - YMIN 

490 X(l) = CP*XA + SP*YA:Y(I) = -SP*XA + CP*YA 

500 YA = Y(I):ZA = Z(l) - ZMIN 

510 Y(l) = CT * YA + ST *ZA:Z(I) = -ST*YA + CT*ZA 

520 NEXT l:PRINT “Sorting...” 

530 1 

540 ’ Sort by depth (shell sort) 

550 IGAP = INT(CSNG(N)/2!) 

560 WHILE IGAP> = 1 

570 FOR I = IGAP + 1 TO N 

580 FOR J = I - IGAP TO 1 STEP - IGAP 

590 JG = J + IGAP 

( continued) 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 253 







Inquiry 109 


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VIEWING MOLECULES 


600 IF Y(J)< = Y(JG) THEN GOTO 640 
610 SWAP X(J),X(JG):SWAP Y(J),Y(JG) 

620 SWAP Z(J),Z(JG):SWAP S(J),S(JG) 

630 NEXT J 
640 NEXT I 

650 IGAP = INT(CSNG(IGAP)/2!) 

660 WEND 
670 ’ 

680 ’ For perspective projection and scale coordinates 
690 SCALE = -IE + 25:SMAX = SCALE 
700 FOR 1 = 1 TO N 

710 YA = 1 !/(VIEWD-Y(I)):X(I) = X(l)‘YA:Z(I) = Z(l)‘YA:S(I) = S(I)*YA 
720 IF SCALE<ABS(X(I)) THEN SCALE = ABS(X(I)) 

730 IF SCALE<ABS(Z(I)) THEN SCALE = ABS(Z(I)) 

740 IF SMAX<S(I) THEN SMAX = S(I) 

750 NEXT l:SCALE = 110!/(SCALE + ,5‘SMAX‘SMAG) 

760 SCALEX = SCALE * DISTORT 
770 ’ 

780 ’ Plot shaded circles (emulating spheres) 

790 FOR I = 1 TO N 

800 IX = FIX(X(I)*SCALEX + 350!):IY = FIX(Z(I)‘SCALE + 130!) 

810 IR = FIX(S(I)‘SCALE‘SMAG):IRX = IR*DISTORT 
820 GOSUB 880 
830 NEXT I 

840 PRINT TIMER-TIM# “ sec" 

850 CLOSE#1 :END 
860 ’ 

870 ’ Sphere plotting subroutine using Ouickdraw FILLOVAL 
880 IE(0) = IY - IR:IE(1) = IX - IRX IE(2) = IY + IR:IE(3) = IX + IRX 
890 CALL FILLOVAL(VARPTR(IE(0)),VARPTR(IP(0))) 

900 IR2 = 8*IR:IRX2 = ,8‘IRX 

910 IE(0) = IY - IR2:IE(1) = IX - IRX2:IE(2) = IY + IR2:IE(3) = IX + IRX2 
920 CALL FILLOVAL(VARPTR(IE(0)),VARPTR(IP(4))) 

930 IR2 = .65‘IR:IRX2 = .65‘IRX 

940 IE(0) = IY - IR2:IE(1) = IX - IRX2:IE(2) = IY + IR2:IE(3) = IX + IRX2 
950 CALL FILLOVAL(VARPTR(IE(0)),VARPTR(IP(8))) 

960 RETURN 


crystallographic technical literature. 
Wyckoff's six-volume series (see 
reference 12) offers an encyclopedic 
tabulation of many molecular struc¬ 
tures. |Y ou can also make up your own coor¬ 
dinates. following the format below, to experi¬ 
ment with the program ,| 

Prepare the data file using MacWrite. 
As shown in the example in figure 2, 
each line of the file represents one 
atom in the molecule and has four 
numbers. The first three numbers of 
each line are the (x.y.z)i coordinates 
of the ith atom and the fourth number 
is the size or atomic radius of this 
atom. These numbers may be in any 
convenient set of units as long as all 
the numbers are in the same units. 
Note that MacWrite sometimes leaves 
several blank lines at the end of the 
file that must be deleted. You must 


also save the file as "text-only" in¬ 
stead of the default "entire-docu¬ 
ment." 

Alternatively, if the molecule is a 
crystal, you can generate a data file 
containing the atomic coordinates for 
it by programming the rules for the 
repetitive structure of the crystal in a 
separate BASIC program, as I did for 
the crystal silicon (see below). 

After asking you for the name of the 
data file, the program asks for the 
rotation angles (in degrees), the view¬ 
ing distance (D in figure 1; in the same 
units as the atomic coordinates and 
sizes), the atomic-radius size mag¬ 
nifier (this can be used to expand or 
contract the apparent size of each dis¬ 
played atom; to get the normal size 
from the input file, type 1), and finally, 

( continued) 


254 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 






























































































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Inquiry 261 


FEBRUARY 1985 ‘BYTE 255 




















VIEWING MOLECULES 



Figure 2: A sample data file showing the three-dimensional coordinates for one unit 
cell of silicon. This was generated by the program in listing 2. 


Listing 2: A Microsoft BASIC program to generate the three-dimensional 
coordinates for a silicon lattice. 

10 ' -***SIGEN.BAS *** 

20 ’ Generate a Silicon lattice of Nx, Ny, Nz unit cells 

30 ’E. Kirkland 15-SEP-84 

40 DEFINT I - N:DEFSNG A-G.O-Z 
50 INPUT “Generate Nx,Ny,Nz Silicon unit cells : “,NX,NY,NZ 
60 INPUT “Output file name : ”,FILES 
70 OPEN FILES FOR OUTPUT AS #1 :SIZE =15 
80 FOR IX = 0 TO NX 
90 FOR IY = 0 TO NY 
100 FOR IZ = 0 TO NZ 
110 WRITE#1,IX.IY,IZ.SIZE 

120 IF (IX = NX) OR (IY = NY) OR (IZ = NZ) GOTO 230 

130 WRITE#1,IX + .5,1Y + .5,IZ.SIZE 

140 WRITE#1,IX + .5,IY,IZ + 5.SIZE 

150 WRITE#1 ,IX,IY + .5,IZ + .5,SIZE 

160 WRITE#1 ,IX + .5,1Y + .5,IZ + 1 .SIZE 

170 WRITE#1 .IX + .5,IY + 1 ,IZ + .5.SIZE 

180 WRITE#1 ,IX + 1 ,IY + .5.IZ + .5,SIZE 

190 WRITE#1 .IX + .25,IY + .25,IZ + .25.SIZE 

200 WRITE#1 .IX + .25,IY + 75.IZ + .75.SIZE 

210 WRITE#1 ,IX + .75,IY + .25,IZ + .75,SIZE 

220 WRITE#1 ,IX + .75,IY + 75,IZ + .25,SIZE 

230 NEXT IZ 

240 NEXT IY 

250 NEXT IX 

260 CLOSE#1 :END 


A circle appears 
elliptical printed 
with the Imagewriter. 


whether the drawing is to be printed. 
The Apple Imagewriter printer has a 
slightly different aspect ratio than the 
screen, so that a circle on the CRT 
screen appears slightly elliptical when 
printed. The program can apply a 
predistortion to the drawing (multi¬ 
plying the x coordinate by 1.094) so 
that it will appear normal when you 
print it. 

The program then reads from the 
data file until it encounters an ‘ end- 
of-file" (EOF) condition (the total 
number of input lines determines the 
total number of atoms in the mole¬ 
cule). An "Input Past End" error in¬ 
dicates that the data file contains 
extra characters. 

After reading in the atomic coor¬ 
dinates and size data, the program 
rotates them about the center point 
and sorts them by depth using the 
Shell sort method (see references 7, 
8, and 9). The program then projects 
these new coordinates into the view¬ 
ing screen coordinates with a 3-D 
perspective and scales them. If at this 
point the program signals, "Out of 
Memory," type CLEAR, 20000 and 
run the program again. 

The final portion of the program 
draws a sphere at each of the pro¬ 
jected atomic coordinates, from the 
back forward, to fulfill the hidden- 
surface requirements. The "sphere" is 
drawn using three QuickDraw FILL- 
OVAL calls with different shading pat¬ 
terns (see Appendix E of the 
Microsoft BASIC 1.0 manual). The first 
call draws a light-gray circle filling the 
whole atomic radius, the second 
draws a dark-gray circle with a slight¬ 
ly smaller radius, and the third draws 
a black circle with a still smaller 
radius. The net effect is a shaded cir¬ 
cle that looks like a sphere. For a print¬ 
out of the drawing, use the print- 
screen (Shift-Command-4) command. 

( continued ) 


256 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 










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FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 257 










Inquiry 206 



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VIEWING MOLECULES 


Note that if two atoms are located 
at exactly the same depth (distance 
from the viewer), this program will ar¬ 
bitrarily draw one atom in front of the 
other. (Obviously this will make a dif¬ 


ference only if the atoms are close 
enough to each other so that their 
radii overlap.) This problem will prob¬ 
ably not be significant in most cases 
and may be easily overcome by 


• File Edit Control 


M0DEL30.BRS 


Data file name SILICON2 DAT 
Azim., polar angles . 0,0 
Viewing distance 7 
Size mag. 1 
Type 1 for printer. 1 
107 atomic coord 
Rotating... 

Sorting... 

39 sec 


= Command 





P 


Ik m m: 

«Hr- 



. m 

Wk- 


Figure 3: A 3-D perspective view of 2- by 2- by 2-unit cells of a silicon lattice. 
The data file was generated by the program in listing 2. 


« Fite Edit Control 



Figure 4: Another 3-D perspective view of the 2- by 2- by 2-unit cell structure 
in figure 3. 


258 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 

































































VIEWING MOLECULES 


rotating the molecule so that one 
atom is slightly in front of (or behind) 
the other. A proper solution to this 
problem is beyond the scope of this 
exercise. 

Examples 

As 1 mentioned above, a crystal may 
be thought of as a single large 
molecule whose structure is a simple 
pattern repeated many times. Silicon 
forms a crystal structure with a basic 
repeat distance of 5.43 angstroms. It 
is composed of two interpenetrating 
face-centered cubic (fee) lattices (see 
references 10 and 11), with one fee lat¬ 
tice offset from the other by 
(Va.Va.Va) x 5.43 angstroms. There are 
roughly 6.2 5 x 10 18 unit cells per 
cubic millimeter of silicon. Large 
crystals of silicon in this form (with 
suitable treatment) are commonly 
used to make the vast majority of in¬ 
tegrated circuits in use today. For ex¬ 
ample. the Motorola 68000 processor 
used in the Macintosh is made out of 
a single crystal of silicon. Listing 2 
shows SIGEN. a short Microsoft 
BASIC 1.0 program that generates a 
data file of the positions of the atoms 
in crystalline silicon. The data file in 
figure 2 was produced by SIGEN and 


contains the coordinates for one 1- by 
1- by 1-unit cell of silicon. Figures 3 
and 4 show computer-graphic repre¬ 
sentations of the crystal, with two 
slightly different orientations: the face 
of the cube (figure 3) and an edge of 
the cube (figure 4). Note the slight 
slope (like a roof of a house) visible 
in figure 4. The vertical edge in the 
center is nearer to the observer than 
the two outer edges on the left and 
right and hence appears larger (taller) 
than the outer edges in 3-D perspec¬ 
tive. Note the characteristic symmetry 
of silicon that the graphic represen¬ 
tation reveals. 

Figure 5 is a computer-graphic rep¬ 
resentation of the aspirin molecule, 
whose structure is given in reference 
12. The chemical formula for aspirin 
is (HOOC)C 6 H 4 -OC(0)CH 3 . I have ar¬ 
bitrarily depicted the hydrogen atoms 
with a small radius to distinguish them 
from the other atoms in the molecule. 
The aspirin molecule has a large hex¬ 
agonal carbon structure (benzene) on 
the bottom and clusters of carbon, 
hydrogen, and oxygen on the top. 

Conclusions 

Computer graphics offers a conve¬ 
nient way to visualize three-dimen- 


# File Edit Control 

MODELSD.BflS 

Data file name ASPIR1N.DAT 
Azim., polar angles : -180,45 
Viewing distance: 2 
Size mag.: 0 9 
Type 1 for printer 1 
2 1 atomic coord. 

Rotating 
Sorting 
11 sec 



] ====== Command m 


i 1 



□ 





Figure 5: 3-D perspective view of the aspirin molecule. 


sional structures of molecules as an 
aid to understanding the behavior of 
the molecules. The Apple Macintosh 
computer is capable of displaying a 
graphic representation of fairly com¬ 
plex molecules. Although there are 
large computer systems that can pro¬ 
duce better graphic representations, 
they are beyond the price range of 
most individuals. The Macintosh gives 
a spectacular performance in relation 
to its cost. Even though MODEL3D is 
written in interpreted BASIC, most of 
the actual graphics is done by the 
Macintosh ROM via the QuickDraw 
subroutine. Hence, the program runs 
relatively fast. These built-in graphics 
routines make the Macintosh very 
useful for this application. ■ 

REFERENCES 

1. Bechgaard, K„ and D. Jerome. "Organic 
Superconductors." Scientific American. July 
1982, pp. 52-61. 

2. Ptashne. M., A. D. Johnson, and C. O. 
Pabo. "A Genetic Switch in a Bacterial 
Virus." Scientific American. November 1982, 
pp. 128-141. 

3. Dickerson, R. E. "The DNA Helix and 
How it is Read." Scientific American. 
December 1983, pp. 94-111. 

4. Foley, J. D., and A. Van Dam. Fundamen¬ 
tals of Interactive Computer Graphics. Reading, 
MA: Addison-Wesley, 1982, plate 15. 

5. Greenberg, D., A. Marcus. A. H. 
Schmidt, and V. Gorter. The Computer Image: 
Applications of Computer Graphics. Reading, 
MA: Addison-Wesley, 1982, pp. 58-59. 

6. Newman, W. M., and R. F. Sproull. Prin¬ 
ciples of Interactive Computer Graphics. 2nd ed. 
New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979, pp. 
339-342. 

7. Shell, D. L. "A High Speed Sorting Pro¬ 
cedure." CACM 2. 7 (July 1959) pp. 30-32. 

8. Rich, R. P. Internal Sorting Methods Illustrated 
with PL/1 Programs. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: 
Prentice-Hall, 1972. 

9. Kernighan, B. W„ and P. J. Plauger. Soft¬ 
ware Tools. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. 
1976, p. 106. 

10. Ashcroft. N. W.. and N. D. Mermin. Solid 
State Physics. New York: Holt. Rinehart. & 
Winston. 1976, p. 106. 

11. Kittel, C. Introduction to Solid State Physics. 
4th ed. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1971, 
pp. 30. 31. 

12. Wyckoff, R. W. G. Crystal Structures: Mol. 
6, Part 1, The Structure of Benzene Derivatives. 
2nd ed. New York: John Wiley & Sons. 
1951. pp. 234-235. 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 259 





























IT ALL ADDS UP... 


IBM SYSTEMS 

Starting as low as 

$1399 

64K, 1-DS/DD DRIVE 
KEYBOARD 



SANYO 



PC COMPATIBLES 

W ®SANYO 


SEC 


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TANDON 

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SPI 

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prs 

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Graph.$89.99 

Report.$79.99 

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300 Green.. $129.00 

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BMC 

1201 Plus (12” Green Hi-Res).$88.99 

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NAP 

12” Amber.$69.99 

SEC 

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MAX-12 Amber.$199.00 

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MONITORS 8AKATA 

SC-100 Color.$249.00 

SG-1000 Green.$129.00 

SA-1000 Amber.$139.00 

«mA\ 

115 12” Green Mono.$139.00 

116 12” Amber Mono.$149.00 

121 Green TTL.$159.00 

122 Amber TTL.$169.00 

210 Color RGB.$249.00 

400 Med-Res RGB.$319.00 

415 Hi-Res RGB.$439.00 

420 Hi-Res RGB (IBM).$469.00 

420L Long Phosphor.$479.00 

425 Audio + WP Feature.CALL 

440 Ultra Hi-Res RGB.$649.00 

QUADRAM 

Quadchrome 8400 Color.$489.00 


ZVM 122 Amber.$89.99 

ZVM 123 Green.$84.99 

ZVM 124-IBM Amber.$149.00 

ZVM 131 Color.$309.00 

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DISKETTES 


maxEll 


Dennison 


5V4” MD-1. 

.$19.99 

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.$29.99 

8” FD-1. 

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VERBATIM 


5 3 /4” SS/DD. 

.$21.99 

5 */4 ” DS/DD. 

.. ..$29.99 

BIB 


5V4” Disk Head Cleaner. 

.$14.99 


Elephant 5‘A” SS/SD.$15.99 

Elephant 5V*” SS/DD.$17.99 

Elephant 6Vi” DS/DD.$24.99 

Elephant EMSP 5V4.$34.99 

DISK HOLDERS 
INNOVATIVE CONCEPT8 

Flip-in-File 10. $3.99 

Flip-in-File 50.$17.99 

Flip-in-File 50 w/lock.$24.99 

Flip-in-File (400/800 ROM).$17.99 


Anchor 

Volksmodem.$59.99 

Mark IL Serial.$79.99 

Mark VII (Auto Ans/Auto Dial)$99.99 

Mark XII (1200 Baud).$259.00 

Mark TRS-80.$99.99 

9 Volt Power Supply.$9.99 


CD Hayes 


Smartmodem 300.$199.00 

Smartmodem 1200. $479.00 

Smartmodem 1200B.$399.00 

Micromodem lie.$269.00 

Micromodem 100.$299.00 

Smart Com II.$75.99 

Chronograph.$ 199.00 


MODEMS _ 

Novation [H§ 

J-Cat.^^..$99.99 

Cat.$139.00 

Smart Cat 103.$179.00 

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AutoCat.$219.00 

212 AutoCat.$549.00 

Apple Cat II.$249.00 

212 Apple Cat.$449.00 

Apple Cat 212 Upgrade. $259.00 

Smart Cat Plus.$339.00 

'T&p” 

ZT-l.$339.00 

ZT-10. $309.00 

ZT-l 1. $369.00 




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Order Status Number: (717) 327-9576 
Open purchase orders accepted with net 30 days terms, subject to credit approval. Next day shipping on all stock items. No risk, no deposit 

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Call today for our catalog. 

260 B Y T E • FEBRUARY 1985 













































































































































































...THE BEST PRICES 



PRINTERS 


AXIOM 

AT-100 Atari Interface Printer$ 159.00 
AT-560 Atari Bidirectional....$259.00 

GP-100 Parallel Interface.$189.00 

GP-700 Atari Color Printer . $489.00 
GP-550 Parallel Printer.$269.00 

BMC 

401 Letter Quality.$589.00 

BX-80 Dot Matrix.$239.00 

BX-100 Dot Matrix.$249.00 

C.ITOH 

Prowriter 8510P.$339.00 

Prowriter 1550P.$569.00 

A10P (18 cps) Son of Starwriter$479.00 

Hot Dot Matrix.CALL 

F10-40P Starwriter.$949.00 

F10-55 Printmaster.$1099.00 

COMREX 

ComWriterll Letter Quality ..$449.00 

DIABLO 

620 Letter Quality.$749.00 

630 API Letter Quality.$1549.00 

DAISY WRITER 

2000.$949.00 

EPSON 

RX-80. RX-80FT. RX-100.CALL 

FX-80, FX-100.CALL 

LQ 1500, JX80 Color.CALL 

JUKI 

6100.$449.00 

6300.$749.00 

MANNESMAN TALLY 

160L.$589.00 

180L.$749.00 

Spirit 80.$259.00 

INTERFACES 

PRACTICAL PERIPHERALS 

Grap heard.$84.99 

Seriall Card.$109.00 

Microbuffer II +.$179.00 

Microbuffer 32K.$199.00 


NEC 


HEWLETT 
PACKARD 

41CV.$189.99 

41CX.$249.99 

HP 71B . $419.99 

HP 11C.$62.99 

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HP 15C.$92.99 

HP 16C.$92.99 

HP 75D.$999.99 

HPIL Module.$98.99 

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Card Reader.$143.99 

Extended Function Module.$63.99 

Time Module . $63.99 

We stock the full line of 
HP calculator products 


KOALA 


HOME COMPUTERS 


2010/15/30.$719.00 

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8810/15/30.$1699.00 

8027.$349.00 

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82. 83, 84, 92, 93, 2350, 2410..CALL 

Okimate-64.$229.00 

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OLYMPIA 

Compact 2.$469.00 

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1090 .$239.00 

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TP-1000.$449.00 

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400 Letter Quality.$279.00 

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We carry Interfaces and cables for most computers on the market today. Call to determine 
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__ SEC 

PC-8201 Portable Computer$299.00 

PC-8231 Disk Drive.$619.00 

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1020 Color Printer.$79.99 

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Touch Table/Software.$64.99 

Light Pen/Software.$72.99 

CX22 Track Ball.$39.9 

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Microbits MB-1150.$79.99 


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CBM 8038.$639.00 

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MSD SD1.$349.00 

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Super Sketch Graphics Pad.$39.99 


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CBM 64.$189.00 

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M-801 Dot Matrix Printer.$219.00 

C1526 Dot Matrix/Serial.$299.00 

Cl702 Color Monitor.$249.00 

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Report (64).$59.99 

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Superbase 64.$59.99 

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Word Pro 2 Plus.$159.00 

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Inquiry 67 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 261 



































































































































































































Lotus 1-2-3 is a trademark of Lotus Development Corporation 
Symphony is a trademark of Ashton Tate 
Frame Work is a trademark of Ashton Tate. 
dBase II is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation 
Wordstar is a trademark of Micropro International. 

AppleWorks is a trademark of Apple Computer Corporation. 
Multiplan is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. 

THE MANUAL: is a trademark of Management Information Source. Inc 


Inquiry 368 


PLEASE SEND ME THE FOLLOWING BOOKS: 


□ Lotus 1-2-3.$14.95 

□ Symphony .$14.95 

□ Framework.$14.95 

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□ Wordstar.$14.95 

□ Appleworks .$14.95 


(Corporate discounts available.) 


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MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SOURCE, INC. 

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SCIENCE 


LABORATORY 

INTERFACING 

by Lincoln E. Ford, M.D. 

A medical researcher examines the capabilities and limitations 
of an important laboratory device 


ALMOST ALL LABORATORY com¬ 
puter applications can be described 
as one of the following functions: (1) 
control of experiments, including tim¬ 
ing and synchronizing external events 
and setting external voltages; (2) data 
acquisition, usually through the digital 
conversion of analog electrical sig¬ 
nals; (3) data storage; and (4) data 
analysis. While data storage and 
analysis make computers most ap¬ 
pealing in the laboratory these func¬ 
tions are common to most computer 
applications. The functions that make 
laboratory applications different from 
other computer uses are the first two, 
control of experiments and data ac¬ 
quisition. The following discussion is 
directed at these two areas. The two 
functions together require five distinct 
hardware components: analog-to- 
digital (A/D) converters, digital-to- 
analog (D/A) converters, digital input- 
output (I/O) ports, counters, and an ac¬ 
curate frequency generator. This 
discussion is developed from my ex¬ 
perience with a hardware device that 
provides all five functions. 

A/D Conversion 

In a typical application, analog signals 
from some electronic device are 


sampled and converted to digital data 
at regular intervals. Usually sampling 
continues for some well-defined 
period. The sampling may progress at 
different speeds at different times. For 
example, it is frequently desirable to 
record high-speed events that occur 
within the setting of lower-speed 
events. To record both types of events 
with an analog recorder (an oscillo¬ 
scope or chart recorder), it is usually 
necessary to make two recordings, 
one at a high speed and one at a low 
speed. Using a computer, it is relative¬ 
ly simple to record a single input at 
different speeds. 

Analog-to-digital conversion is 
perhaps the most critical of labora¬ 
tory applications because errors at 
this step will greatly distort the data. 
It is also frequently the function that 
most taxes the speed of the com¬ 
puter. Speed at this stage is some¬ 
times limited by the A/D converters, 


Lincoln E. Ford, M.D., is an associate pro¬ 
fessor of medicine and cardiology at the 
University of Chicago (Cardiology Section, 
Department of Medicine, University of 
Chicago, 950 East 59 th St., Chicago, IL 
60637). His hobbies include gardening and 
skiing. 


but more often it is limited by soft¬ 
ware. Ultimately, the software is 
limited by the design of the computer 
but more frequently it is limited by 
having to perform some other task 
concomitantly. One such task is the 
generation of control pulses during 
A/D sampling. 

In many instances the initiation of 
an A/D recording must be synchro¬ 
nized with the experiment. Instead of 
having an external device initiate the 
A/D conversion sequence, it is tempt¬ 
ing to have the computer control the 
experiment at the same time that it 
is collecting data. An additional ad¬ 
vantage of this combined approach is 
that the data collection is very ac¬ 
curately synchronized to the experi¬ 
mental procedure. The difficulty with 
this approach is that it requires the 
computer to perform two tasks at 
once. This can call for some relative¬ 
ly sophisticated programming, par¬ 
ticularly when high speeds are neces¬ 
sary. 

Interface Boards 

There are several commercially avail¬ 
able devices that will perform at least 
four of the five functions required for 

(continued) 


FEBRUARY 1985 ‘BYTE 263 







LABORATORY INTERFACING 


the laboratory applications described 
above. Several of my colleagues and 
I bought the LabMaster board made 
by Tecmar because it provides all five 
functions and because it was the first 
one available. It also costs less than 
more recent devices. It consists of a 
motherboard that fits into the IBM PC 
and a daughterboard that houses the 
A/D converters outside the computer. 
This arrangement isolates the incom¬ 
ing analog signals from electrical in¬ 
terference inside the computer. 

The Data Translation Company 
makes a similar board that has the 
capability of direct memory access 
not available on the LabMaster but 
does not have the Tecmar board's 
progammable counters. We preferred 
the Tecmar board in part because we 
wanted to put out logic pulses to con¬ 
trol the experimental apparatus while 
collecting data with the A/D converter. 
The five programmable counters 
simplify this task because they 
operate independently of the central 
processing unit of the host computer. 
The counters can be programmed to 
begin counting the same frequency 
pulses that trigger the A/D conver¬ 
sions. When they have completed 
their count they toggle their external 
outputs without intervention from the 
computer. Thus, the logic pulses are 
synchronized exactly to data acquisi¬ 
tion without interfering with the high¬ 
speed operation of the central 
processor. 

When very high speeds are not re¬ 
quired. the digital I/O port can be 
used for applications control. Al¬ 
though most commonly used as a 
single interface to other digital equip¬ 
ment. the individual channels in the 
port can be used separately to con¬ 
trol different pieces of apparatus. In 
addition, these channels can be con¬ 
figured to accept logic pulses from 
the apparatus, thereby allowing a 
bidirectional interaction. 

A final way of controlling experi¬ 
ments is to use the D/A converters to 
set voltage levels for external devices. 

Possible Improvements 

In spite of our general satisfaction 
with the Tecmar board, we found 


several areas that need improvement, 
both in the LabMaster and in the 
other devices that are available. As ex¬ 
plained in lohn Mertus's letter to 
BYTE ("Data Collection with an IBM 
PC." October 1984, page 14). the 
absence of direct memory access on 
the Tecmar board severely limits this 
board in multitasking operations. 

The cable connections could be 
greatly improved. Tecmar sells a set 
of cables for external connections to 
the board, but they are simply that— 
bare cables. Users must make their 
own interfaces. We have made an in¬ 
terface box with BNC connectors for 
each connection, and while we were 
at it. we put in some buffer chips to 
protect the digital I/O ports. Several 
other manufacturers supply slightly 
less primitive connections for their 
devices, but at best these consist of 
screw terminals for bare wires. I do 
not know of many laboratory scien¬ 
tists who relish the thought of bring¬ 
ing their signals out on bare wires. 
Any manufacturer who supplied a 
device with an interface having stan¬ 
dard connectors such as BNCs and 
well-protected inputs would find a 
ready market. 

There is one improvement related 
to signal processing that I would 
especially like to see. This is the ad¬ 
dition of filters to the analog inputs 
of the A/D converters. It is well known 
that no information can be derived 
about the frequency components of 
a digitized signal that are greater than 
half the sampling frequency. Noise 
and oscillations in the signal that are 
faster than the sampling frequency at 
best decrease the signal-to-noise 
ratio. In many cases, faster signals in¬ 
troduce "aliasing" spurious low- 
frequency oscillations that result from 
sampling a high-frequency oscillation 
at systematically different parts of its 
period. Although filters generally in¬ 
troduce lags in electronic signals, the 
lags introduced by antialiasing filters 
are likely to cause far less signal 
distortion than will high-frequency 
oscillations. The antialiasing device 
should consist of a low-pass filter with 
a sharp cutoff frequency near the 
sampling frequency. The main argu¬ 


ment against such a filter is that the 
sampling frequency varies widely, 
sometimes within the same record, so 
that the cutoff frequency must be 
made to vary in the same way. The 
solution to this problem is to use an 
integrator that averages the signal be¬ 
tween sample intervals. A. F. Huxley 
and G. L. Reed recently described a 
clever circuit that performs this 
averaging (see ’An Automatic 
Smoothing Circuit for Input to Digitiz¬ 
ing Equipment," I ournal of Physiology , 
volume 292, 1979, page IIP). It is trig¬ 
gered by the same clock pulse that 
triggers the A/D conversions, so that 
its cutoff frequency always varies with 
the sampling frequency. 

A major way in which A/D con¬ 
verters could be improved is by the 
use of separate converters for each in¬ 
put channel and the use of on-board 
data buffers. Most computer-con¬ 
trolled multichannel devices have a 
single A/D converter with a multi¬ 
plexer that switches different channels 
into it. Only one channel is converted 
at a time, so that the samples in each 
channel are displaced in time relative 
to those in other channels. This time 
displacement can cause a systematic 
error when the data from one chan¬ 
nel is plotted as a function of that in 
another. The samples from different 
channels can be brought into coin¬ 
cidence either by using separate A/D 
converters for each channel or by 
holding the signals from all channels 
in sample-and-hold circuits that are 
triggered when the first channel 
begins its conversion. The advantage 
of separate converters and on-board 
data buffers is that they increase the 
speed of operation while effecting the 
synchronization. 

Computer Considerations 

Your choice of interface board has an 
effect on the size of the central pro¬ 
cessor and data bus needed. Most 
data is collected from 10-. 12-. or 
16-bit A/D converters, so one A/D 
conversion will require a 2-byte word. 
In a machine with a 16-bit bus (a true 
16-bit computer) entire words can be 
moved at once. In a smaller computer 

( continued ) 


264 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 






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Inquiry 343 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 265 


























































LABORATORY INTERFACING 


DeSmet 

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BOTH 8087 AND S/W FLOATING POINT 

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OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE 

• First and Second in AUG 83 BYTE 
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SYMBOLIC DEBUGGER 



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• Set multiple breakpoints by function 
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DOS LINK SUPPORT $ 35 


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Call 9 a m. - 1 pm to CHARGE by VISA/MC/AMEX 


having an 8-bit bus, words must be 
moved in two sequential steps. This 
need to make two-step transfers great¬ 
ly slows most of the computer's oper¬ 
ation. Since most time-critical opera¬ 
tions involve data transfers along the 
bus. this slowing occurs at a very 
vulnerable stage. Although a true 
16-bit computer transfers data twice 
as fast as an 8-bit machine, it does not 
follow that a 32-bit computer would 
be still faster in handling integer data. 
Since integer data occurs in 2-byte 
words, increasing the bus size to 32 
bits would not produce any increase 
in speed unless some way could be 
devised to move two words at once. 
The 16-bit machines available today 
are therefore as large as many opera¬ 
tions require. 

A question related to size is 
whether it is better to have several 
small, single-purpose computers or 
one large, multipurpose machine. My 
own preference is for the former. A 
major consideration is cost. In addi¬ 
tion. the failure of a single computer 
in a group does not incapacitate the 
entire laboratory in the way that the 
failure of a single large computer 
does. Another advantage of a group 
of computers is that each can be 
dedicated to a single task. Even with 
the best multitasking arrangements, 
there will always be some time-critical 
operation that requires the uninter¬ 
rupted use of the computer, forcing 
other users to wait. With multiple 
computers such interactive interrup¬ 
tions do not occur. 

The main disadvantage of small 
computers is that they are slow. This 
disadvantage is usually more than off¬ 
set by the ability to dedicate the 
machine to a specific task for an ex¬ 
tended period. 

The IBM PC Compromise 

In spite of the negative considerations 
about the 8-bit bus. my colleagues 
and 1 bought several IBM PCs for use 
in the laboratory. We selected this 
computer rather than a true 16-bit 
machine because of its popularity. 
Many peripherals and programs are 
available for it. and we felt that it 
would not go out of production near¬ 


ly as quickly as some of the other, less 
popular models. 

We have found the PC to be as good 
as or better than expected in almost 
all areas except for one peculiarity: 
the absence of a limited interrupt or 
a software-controllable wait state. 
Once an A/D conversion is made, a 
flag consisting of one bit in a status 
register is set. The computer must 
then detect the flag and take the 
digital data from the converter. The 
PC can detect the flag in only two 
ways: polling the status register or 
generating a full interrupt. A full inter¬ 
rupt. together with its return, requires 
83 clock cycles. This many cycles 
would take more than 20 microsec¬ 
onds (/xs) just to detect the flag. Poll¬ 
ing takes substantially less time. Using 
a polling routine, we have written se¬ 
quential A/D sampling programs that 
operate at a rate of 22 /is per conver¬ 
sion. Over half that time is spent poll¬ 
ing the status register. If a more rapid 
way of detecting the flag could be 
devised, this routine could operate at 
more than twice the speed. If the cen¬ 
tral processor could be put in a wait 
state immediately before each A/D 
conversion and be released by the 
A/D done" flag, detection of the con¬ 
version would be virtually instan¬ 
taneous. An otherwise-similar com¬ 
puter that had such a capability would 
be able to accept A/D conversions 
about every 10 fis. 

Software 

Software is the most crucial part of 
any laboratory system. Clever pro¬ 
gramming can introduce great flex¬ 
ibility and compensate for many defi¬ 
ciencies in hardware. Poor program¬ 
ming can hobble even the best sys¬ 
tem. The time required to develop 
good programs should not be under¬ 
estimated. Many of us have bought a 
piece of equipment that was physical¬ 
ly capable of performing some 
desired task only to find that weeks 
of programming were required to 
make it work. For those of us who 
have had this experience, there is no 
stronger selling point for equipment 
than the concomitant availability of 
adequate programs to run it. ■ 


266 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 






















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IBM-PC COMPATIBLE COLOR GRAPHICS FOR THE S100 BUS 



COLOR MAGIC brings to the SI00 bus a new level of 
compatibility with the IBM-PC. In combination with our 
other boards, COLOR MAGIC allows execution of IBM 
PC-DOS programs without modification. COLOR 
MAGIC maps to the same port addresses and memory 
space as the IBM-PC color graphic board. 

COLOR MAGIC has the following features: 

■ 32 K bytes of onboard video memory 
(The IBM-PC has only 16 K bytes) 

■ DISPLAY MODES: 

— 80 by 25 alpha-numeric 

— 40 by 25 alpha-numeric 

— 160 by 100 16 color graphic 

— 320 by 200 4 color 

— 640 by 200 4 color — 32k version 
(not supported by IBM) 

■ RGB and composite video outputs 

■ Light pen input 

■ IBM-PC compatible KEYBOARD INTERFACE 
onboard 

COLOR MAGIC is supported under MS-DOS 2.11 now 
and will be supported under Concurrent DOS by 
MAR 1. With COLOR MAGIC in combination with our 


other high performance boards, you can now config¬ 
ure an SI00 bus system with up to 5 times the perfor¬ 
mance of an IBM PC and 1.5 times the performance of 
an IBM-PC/AT. If your application requires IBM com¬ 
patibility and high performance LOMAS DATA PROD¬ 
UCTS IS THE ONLY LOGICAL CHOICE. 

PRICE. .. .16K VERSION - $595.00, 32K - $695.00 


ANNOUNCING MEGARAM: 


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Application programs being written for today’s 16 bit computers are requiring 
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MEGARAM has been designed to address this problem and provide FAST, 
RELIABLE, HIGH DENSITY memory for the S100 BUS. MEGARAM requires 
no wait states with any of our 8086 (up to 10MHZ) or 80186 CPU boards and 
only one wait state with our 6MHZ 80286 CPU board. Our board does not re¬ 
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backing generally reduces reliability). Parity is included to insure data 
corruption, due to memory errors, will not go undetected. 

256 Kbyte . . $595.00 512 Kbytes $1095.00 

1Mbyte . . $1995.00 (Feb 1) 2 Mbytes. $3795.00 



■ LIGHTNING ONE ***8086/8088 CPU 

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■ HAZITALL SYSTEM SUPPORT BOARD 

2 serial, 2 parallel ports, battery protected clock calendar, 
Hard disk controller host interface . PRICE $325.00 

■ RAM67 HIGH PERFORMANCE STATIC RAM 

High speed (100ns) low power CMOS static RAM 128K bytes, 
r extended addressing PRICE $995.00 

■ LDP72 FLOPPY DISK CONTROLLER 

Single double density, single/double sided disks, both 8" 
and 5 1 4" inch drives simultaneously . PRICE $275.00 

■ LIGHTNING 286-80286 CPU BOARD 

Offers 4 times the performance of a 5MHZ 8086 CPU while 
maintaining software compatibility PRICE $1395.00 

■ OCTAPORT 8 PORT SERIAL BOARD 

8 serial ports 0 to 19200 baud operation real time clock 
interrupt. Ideal for multi-user systems such as MP/M 86 * 
PRICE $395.00 


k CP/M 86, MP/M 86 and CONCURRENT CP/M 86 are trademarks of 
Digital Research 

k k MS DOS is a trademark of Microsoft. 

k **L,ightning One is a trademark of Lomas Data Products, Inc 

****PC DOS is a trademark of IBM. 

Dealer inquiries invited. 


LOMAS DATA T? T^TT) 
PRODUCTS, inc j ^ r 

66 Hopkinton Road, West boro, M A 01581 

Tel: (617) 366-6434 □ Telex: 4996272 inquiry 188 


For orders outside the U.S., contact our exclusive dealers: 
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l lEngland Rational Systems, Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire 
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Prices and specifications are subject to change. 















































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Dot Matrix Printers 


BROTHER/DYNAX 

Brother 2024L. $ 1039.88 

C. ITOH 

Prowriter (8510). 369.88 

Prowriter-2 (136 col). 624.88 

Prowriter BPI (IBM-PC)_ 399.88 

HotDot. 509.88 

HotDot-2 (136 col). 729.88 

CITIZEN 

MSP-10. 349.88 

MSP-15 (136 col). 519.88 

EPSON 

RX/FX/LQ Series. CALL 

OK I DATA 

Microline 92. 399.88 

92 w/PC compatibility_ 399.88 

92 w/Mac compatibility... 499.88 

Microline 93. 639.88 

93 w/PC compatibility_ 639.88 

Microline 84. 739.88 

MEMOTECH 

DMX-80 (Panasonic 1090)... 189.88 
NEC 

Pinwriter (80 col). 699.88 

Pinwriter (132 col). 929.88 

STAR MICRONICS 

SG-10 (Gemini). 249.88 

SG-15(Gemini). 399.88 

SD-10 (Delta). 369.88 

SD-15 (Delta). 489.88 

SR-10 (Radix). 529.88 

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Letter-Quality Printers 

BROTHER/DYNAX 

Brother DX-15. $ 399.88 

Brother HR-25. 669.88 

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HAYES 

Micromodem lie (Apple). ..$ 249.88 

Smartmodem, 300 bd. CALL 

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200ns 64K Memory Kit .... $ 49.88 
ALLOY 

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Monitor Extention Cable ... 39.88 
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5151 keyboard. 219.88 


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384K Quadboard w/64K... 269.88 

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Controller. 99.88 

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Videx 

VideoTerm. 199.88 

VideoTerm/softswitch. 219.88 

PSIO (parallel/RS-232).... 159.88 

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DATABASES 

1st Base. $ 134.88 

DB Master. 134.88 

FactFinder. 99.88 

Filevision. 134.88 

Habadex DB. 69.88 

Habadex Adapter. 39.88 

Main Street Filer. 139.88 

MegaFiler. 134.88 

Microsoft File. 134.88 

Odesta Helix. 279.88 

Omnis 2 (Req. 2 drives)... 189.88 

OverVue. 199.88 

PFS: File. 89.88 

PFS: Report. 89.88 

FINANCIAL/BUSINESS 

Back to Basics GL. $ 109.88 

Dollars & Sense. 99.88 

Front Desk. 104.88 

Microsoft Chart. 89.88 

Microsoft Multiplan. 134.88 

Human Edge Series. CALL 

TK! Solver. 169.88 

TK! Templates. 44.88 


LANGUAGES 

MacASM (Assembler). $ 69.88 

MacForth (Level I). 99.88 

MacForth (Level II). 169.88 

Microsoft BASIC 2.0. 99.88 

Softworks“C”. 289.88 

WORD PROCESSING 

Hayden Speller. $ 54.88 

Mac Daisy Connection. 79.88 

Mac Epson Connection_ 69.88 

Mac Spell Right. 64.88 

MasterType. 34.88 

MegaMerge. 89.88 

Palantir MacType. 34.88 

ThinkTank 128. 99.88 

ThinkTank 512. 169.88 

Typing Tutor III. 44.88 

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Building Blocks. $ 54.88 

Click Art Series. 34.88 

Commercial Interiors. 139.88 

daVinci Series. 34.88 

Mac the Knife. 29.88 

Mac the Knife Fonts. 34.88 

McPic! Series. 34.88 

Slide Show Magician. 44.88 

OTHER 

Copy II Mac. $ 29.88 

Dow Jones Straight Talk . .. 54.88 

Hayden M usicWorks. 54.88 

Hey. MAC! Newsletter. 10.00 

Mind Prober. 34.88 

Smoothtalker. 99.88 

Videx MacCalendar. 59.88 

Macintosh Hardware 

3Vi" Diskettes (10 pkg). ...$ 34.88 

Diskette Holder. 24.88 

Field Pro Carrying Case_ 79.88 

HabaDisk (2nd drive). 369.88 

Kensington Starter Pak_ 69.88 

Kensington Modem. 119.88 

Surge Suppressor. 44.88 

Koala MacVision. 259.88 

Tecmar MacDrives. CALL 

Microcom MacModem_ 499.88 

Smartcat+ modem. 349.88 

Turbo Touch. 94.88 


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268 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 36 


































































































































































SCIENCE 


INTERFACING FOR 

DATA 

ACQUISITION 

by Thomas R. Clune 


A comparison of three interfaces 


THE USE OF MICROCOMPUTERS for 
data acquisition in the sciences is sur¬ 
prisingly limited. It is widely recog¬ 
nized that the need for such applica¬ 
tions exists. But I discovered in my ex¬ 
perience at Brandeis University that 
most researchers have either had bad 
experiences with data acquisition on 
minicomputers or simply don't feel 
that they have the time to learn what 
they would need to know to retool 
their labs. Nonetheless, the advan¬ 
tages of computerizing are so sub¬ 
stantial that microcomputer-based 
data acquisition is slowly moving into 
the lab. In this article. I'll share some 
of my experience with different ap¬ 
proaches to computerizing data ac¬ 
quisition. Since I find the IEEE-488 to 
be the most versatile option for 
laboratory data acquisition. I will 
devote a fair amount of time to ex¬ 
plaining that interface. My hope is that 
my experience may ease the prob¬ 
lems that you might encounter in 
computerizing your setup. 

The Problem 

There are three basic reasons why 
microcomputers are so important in 


the context of data acquisition. First, 
for a minicomputer or mainframe to 
be affordable, its use must be shared 
by more than one person, but in data 
acquisition it is crucial to have the 
computer's attention when the data 
is ready. Microcomputers make single- 
user systems affordable. Second, 
mainframe computers are generally 
not located in the laboratory. Thus, in 
any but very low speed data-acquisi- 
tion contexts, there is a communica¬ 
tions bottleneck created by the data 
transmission. Third, there is no com¬ 
mon standard for interfacing with 
laboratory instruments on main¬ 
frames, so each laboratory setup pre¬ 
sents substantial and individual prob¬ 
lems of design and implementation 
that exacerbate the financial and 
logistical difficulties. 

At least one other concern is fuel¬ 
ing the drive toward computerization 


Thomas R. Clune is a BYTE technical editor. 
Before coming to BYTE, he was the physical - 
chemistry lab coordinator at Brandeis Univer¬ 
sity. where he taught data acquisition by 
microcomputer. He can be contacted at POB 
372, Hancock. NH 03449. 


in the lab: The cost of turnkey instru¬ 
ments has become so high that most 
institutions are unable to afford the 
state-of-the-art equipment needed to 
conduct research. This is particularly 
irritating because most instruments in 
the sciences have essentially the same 
components. You end up paying over 
and over again for a built-in chart 
recorder, a waveform digitizer, a 
monochrometer, a photomultiplier, 
etc. And when the new generation of 
an instrument comes out with a 
broader dynamic range or some other 
improvement in one component, the 
entire turnkey instrument must be re¬ 
placed. We simply can't afford to pay 
for research done that way any more. 
With the availability of microcom¬ 
puters, we don't have to. We can tie 
chart recorders, waveform digitizers, 
and whatever else we need together 
into a dedicated instrument and re¬ 
cycle the components as the field or 
our research evolves. 

A/D Converters 

The least expensive way to automate 
a lab is with an analog-to-digital (A/D) 

( continued ) 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 269 







INTERFACING 


The speed of a 
transient tracked 


by D/D equipment 
is not limited by the 
computer's throughput. 


converter. There are, however, a 
number of limitations to this ap¬ 
proach. First, an A/D converter 
samples only one voltage source at 
a time. Typically, an experiment re¬ 
quires correlating one reading to 
others for the same instant of time 
(e.g., pressure versus temperature at 
time t). If the time requirements are 
sufficiently lax, that is, if readings 
taken 10 or 20 microseconds apart 
can be treated as simultaneous, an 
A/D converter may be acceptable. But 
often this time lag is sufficient to make 
the data hopelessly imprecise. The 
second problem with A/D converters 
is that they are slow. The maximum 
sampling rate on most 'high-speed'' 
A/D converter boards is 100 kilohertz 
(kHz). Practically speaking, this means 
that you can't track a transient of 
greater than approximately 20 kHz. 
Much of scientific data acquisition 
now requires at least the ability to 
track a transient of a few megahertz. 
A third problem with A/D converters 
is that, because the boards are made 
to be inexpensive, their linearity is not 
very good. A 12-bit board may have 
an effective resolution of only 7 or 8 
bits. Finally, A/D converters are very 
susceptible to noise in a lab. Com¬ 
monly, the cabling will be either 
twisted-pair or ribbon cable—very 
good antennae. In a well-designed 
board, the cabling is simple coax, 
which may still not give the level of 
noise immunity required in a labora¬ 
tory environment. 

Nonetheless, an A/D converter is a 
good buy if it will do your task. My 
feeling is that the best use of an A/D 
converter is to connect it to the chart 
output of a stand-alone instrument. 


Instead of junking a high-quality 
analog instrument in the interests of 
modernizing, use the capabilities 
available in your lab now. One big ad¬ 
vantage of this kind of setup is that 
you can use a very slow A/D con¬ 
verter. This is desirable for two 
reasons: first, a slow A/D converter 
will be better made than a compar¬ 
ably priced high-speed board, and 
second, since you will only need a 
30-Hz-or-so A/D converter, most noise 
in the lab will be too fast for the A/D 
converter to respond to it. Further, 
your low-pass filter will be able to cut 
out line voltages, which are an in¬ 
evitable source of noise in any lab. 

D/D and RS-232C 

If an A/D converter won't meet your 
needs, you need stand-alone instru¬ 
ments that can transfer digital infor¬ 
mation to the computer via a digital- 
to-digital (D/D) interface. The first ad¬ 
vantage of D/D over A/D is that data 
may be analyzed at high speed and 
the digital "snapshot" of the analysis 
stored in a buffer of a few kilobytes 
on the stand-alone instrument. The 
buffer data can then be downloaded 
to the computer at whatever speed 
the interface will support. That is, A/D 
conversion necessarily requires real¬ 
time analysis, whereas the speed of 
a transient that can be tracked by D/D 
equipment is not limited by the micro¬ 
computer's throughput. Of course, 
speed of data transfer is still impor¬ 
tant because it determines how quick¬ 
ly the instrument can repeat an 
analysis. 

D/D interfaces come in two flavors: 
serial, which transfers information a 
bit at a time; and parallel, which trans¬ 
fers data a word (commonly one byte) 
at a time. The most common serial 
port is an RS-232C interface. 

There is a lot to dislike about the 
RS-232C. First, it is not standard. 
There are two ends to an RS-232C in¬ 
terface: the DTE (data-terminal equip¬ 
ment) end and the DCE (data-commu- 
nications equipment) end. Often the 
two instruments you want to hook 
together will both be configured as 
DTEs, so you will probably have to 
create a cable that matches your par¬ 


ticular setup once you find out what 
it is. Second, the only handshaking 
provided is on the level of whole 
messages. The interface does not 
verify that data has been received 
before proceeding. It is very easy to 
lose data on this interface. Third, 
RS-232C is a notoriously noisy inter¬ 
face—perhaps no worse than an A/D 
converter, but that isn't saying much. 
Fourth, RS-232C is slow. Since it sends 
only one bit at a time, it has a built-in 
speed disadvantage over parallel in¬ 
terfaces. And interference is an in¬ 
creasing problem with increasing 
transmission rates (as is true of any 
system). Finally, RS-232C is able to 
connect only two devices together. 
Thus, coordination and control of 
multiple data sources requires more 
than one RS-232C port on the com¬ 
puter and makes for devilishly difficult 
software integration. 

The strong points of RS-232C are 
twofold. First, it is capable of transmit¬ 
ting information over long distances 
by telephone. Second, it is the only 
interface available on some older in¬ 
struments. If you have to use it, you 
learn to live with it. But you'll never 
learn to love it. 

IEEE-488 

The IEEE-488 is a byte-serial, bit- 
parallel interface that overcomes the 
problems of the interfaces outlined 
above. First, the interface is incredibly 
resistant to interference. For example, 
at the Brandeis University chemistry 
department, we used the interface in 
a pulsed-nitrogen-laser experiment 
and found that the data transmission 
was unaffected by noise in any en¬ 
vironment where the computer itself 
was able to function. Figure 1 shows 
the physical layout of the cable that 
provides such excellent noise 
immunity. 

The second virtue of IEEE-488 is 
that the interface has a bus structure. 
That is, you can interface up to 15 
devices at a time using the same 
board. This structure simplifies pro¬ 
cess control and allows true simulta¬ 
neous data acquisition, as we shall 
see presently. 

( continued ) 


270 B Y T E • FEBRUARY 1985 









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Inquiry 239 


FEBRUARY 1985 ‘BYTE 271 












INTERFACING 


Third, the interface is fast for a 
micro. Data can be transferred at up 
to 1 million bytes per second (using 
special tristate drivers on the lines) 
and without any special care will sup¬ 
port transmission rates of about 250K 
to 300K bytes per second using DMA 
(direct memory access). 

Fourth, the interface is standard and 
widely available. All IEEE-488 instru¬ 
ments are plug-compatible, and the 
interface is available on every major 
kind of laboratory device. Over 2000 
devices are currently available with an 
IEEE-488 interface. Given that the 
standard was not set in its current 
form until 1978 and that there is a lag 
between specification and implemen¬ 
tation, the rapid adoption of the stan¬ 
dard gives an indication of how sore¬ 
ly needed it was. 

The primary limitation of the stan¬ 
dard is that the total cable length on 
an installation cannot exceed 20 
meters without special (and expen¬ 
sive) repeaters. In practice, you will 
seldom need to exceed that length. 
And given that long cabling slows 
transmission rates and is more 
susceptible to noise, you generally do 


better to keep the cabling short 
anyway. 

The Standard Explanation 

The IEEE-488 standard is relatively in¬ 
volved because it accommodates a 
wide variety of uses. In the rest of this 
article, I'll examine the standard and 
then take a close look at a setup using 
the interface. 

IEEE-488 began life as the General- 
Purpose Interface Bus (GPIB) of the 
Hewlett-Packard Corporation. In 1975, 
the IEEE adopted the GPIB as its stan¬ 
dard. Some minor modifications were 
made to the standard in 1978, but 
IEEE-488 still goes by the name GPIB 
on HP products. 

Devices on the interface may per¬ 
form three kinds of functions. They 
may be talkers; that is, they may 
transmit data to other devices on the 
interface. Of course, there can be only 
one active talker at any given time. 
Alternatively, a device may be a 
listener—it may receive data or in¬ 
structions from another device on the 
interface. There may be more than 
one active listener on the interface at 
any given time. And a device may act 


as a controller, a coordinator of which 
device may talk when and which 
devices may listen. Finally, a device 
may do nothing but stand by. A 
device may, at different times, assume 
any of the above functions. 

The interface supports two modes 
of operation: command and data. As 
the name suggests, the command 
mode is for process control. For ex¬ 
ample, if one of the devices on the in¬ 
terface is a digital multimeter (DMM), 
the controller may program the DMM 
for reading DC voltages in the 3-volt 
full-scale deflection range. In the data 
mode, data is transferred from talker 
to listener(s) over the interface. 

The interface has 24 lines, 8 of 
which are ground lines. The other 16 
are divided into three groups: 8 bi¬ 
directional data lines, 3 data-byte con¬ 
trol lines (handshake lines), and 5 
general interface-management lines. 

The three-line handshake protocol 
functions as follows: When informa¬ 
tion is going to be transferred over the 
bus, the listeners must be ready to 
receive the data. If they are not. they 
signal NRFD (not ready for data) by 

( continued ) 




CABLE INSULATION 

WOVEN GROUND OUTER SLEEVE 

DAV 

TWISTED PAIR /ft 
NRFD 

TWISTED-PAIR /ft 
NDAC 

TWISTED-PAIR /ft 


WOVEN GROUND INNER SLEEVE 


DATA LINES 


REN 

EOI 


rh 


- SRQ 

--TWISTED-PAIR 



ATN 

TWISTED-PAIR 

IFC 

TWISTED-PAIR 


rh 

rh 

rh 


Figure I: Cutaway view of an IEEE-488 cable. Notice the large number of grounds for shielding. 


272 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 13 for Dealers. 
Inquiry 14 for End-Users. 















































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INTERFACING 


pulling the NRFD line low (low is 
defined as true by the IEEE-488 stan¬ 
dard). The NRFD line has an open- 
collector design, so if any one listener 
is not ready the line is kept low. When 
all the listeners are ready the NRFD 
line goes high. If the talker is ready 
to transmit data, it sets the DAV (data 
valid) line low. The transition of the 
DAV line triggers the resetting of the 
NRFD line and the listeners pick up 
the latched byte of data. When each 
listener receives the data, it releases 
the NDAC (not data accepted) line, 
which is also open-collector. When all 
listeners have received the data, the 
NDAC line goes high, causing a reset 
of the DAV line, which in turn triggers 
the resetting of the NDAC line. This se¬ 
quence. outlined in figure 2. is 
repeated for each byte in a transmis¬ 
sion. It may not be immediately ap¬ 
parent why three lines are useful in 
this sequence. At first glance it ap¬ 
pears that the DAV and NDAC line 
would accomplish everything neces¬ 
sary for the transmission of data. 
However, the NDAC line is released as 
soon as the IEEE-488 board of the 
listener has received the data. The in¬ 
formation must still be downloaded 
from the IEEE-488 data register to, for 
example, the computer's main mem¬ 
ory to be stored more permanently. 
By releasing the talker as soon as the 
data has been transferred, the talker 
becomes free to prepare the next 
byte for transmission at the same time 
that the listeners are "digesting'' the 
last byte, so the rate of information 
transfer may be maximized. The 
NRFD line is thus necessary to pre¬ 


vent the possibility of a listener's data 
register being prematurely overwrit¬ 
ten. 

Since each byte of data transferred 
is a self-contained event on the inter¬ 
face. there must be some way of sig¬ 
naling the end of a data-transfer se¬ 
quence. This may be done in two 
ways. The one I will mention here is 
to use one of the bus-management 
lines, the EOI (end or identify) line. 
When a talker sets this line, it signals 
that the data-transfer sequence is 
complete. 

The "identify'' in EOI applies to the 
controller's use of the line. If the in¬ 
terface is to be used for process con¬ 
trol, there must be a way for the con¬ 
troller to monitor the "fitness for 
duty'' of the various devices. One way 
it may do so is by conducting a 
parallel poll of the devices. If the con¬ 
troller asserts ATN (attention) and 
EOI. each device responds by using 
one data line to say whether or not 
it has any problems. If one does, the 
computer (the controller) can query 
that device further to determine the 
precise nature of the difficulty. The 
limitation of a parallel poll is that the 
controller must initiate the inquiry. 
IEEE-488 also provides for a serial 
poll, in which a device in trouble may 
alert the controller that all is not well 
by asserting SRQ (service request). 
The computer then can ask each 
device in turn what its status is to 
determine the source and nature of 
the problem. 

ATN serves another, more general 
purpose as well. Any time the con¬ 
troller asserts ATN. it can change the 


function of a device from, say. talker 
to listener. When ATN is asserted, the 
board goes into the command mode. 
All subsequent information is control 
data. In general, control information 
will apply to only some of the avail¬ 
able devices. How is the information 
restricted to only the appropriate 
devices' attention? Each instrument 
on the interface can be assigned a 
unique 5-bit address, generally by DIP 
(dual-inline package) switches on the 
backplane of the instrument. Valid ad¬ 
dresses are numbers up to and includ¬ 
ing 30. When the computer wants to 
address its control data to a specific 
set of devices, it asserts ATN and out¬ 
puts a list of the appropriate address 
numbers (notice that the same string 
of outputs would be treated as data 
were the board not in the command 
mode). Tkble 1 shows the protocols 
of the computer addressing for dif¬ 
ferent functions. If a device is being 
told to listen to control information, 
an addressed command follows its 
address-to-listen call. Addressed con¬ 
trol information defined by the 
IEEE-488 standard includes GTL (go 
to local), which releases a device from 
remote control; SDC (selected-device 
clear), which resets a device to its 
default setting; PPC (parallel-poll con¬ 
figure). which is used to assign a data 
line to a device for answering a 
parallel poll; GET (group-enable trig¬ 
ger), which initiates simultaneous data 
acquisition by each addressed device; 
and TCT (take control), which passes 
control of the bus management from 
the present controller to the specified 
device. 

Tvo other kinds of multiline com¬ 
mands are shown in table 1. First is 
a secondary address. This is informa¬ 
tion after the primary address that 
configures a device for a particular 
kind of operation. This is one way that 
a DMM may be set for DC volts, for 
example. The primary address 
specifies the DMM device number, 
and the secondary address specifies 
the DC voltmeter function in the 
DMM. The significance of secondary 
addresses is not part of the standard. 
Each manufacturer decides whether 

( continued ) 


DAV 

NRFD 

NDAC 

Figure 2; The logic flow of the IEEE-488 handshake squence. low is true. 


274 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 





















SOME DARK TRUTHS ABOUT 
RACKING UP YOUR DATA ON TAPE. 


• Tape backup manufacturers promise 
speed, peace of mind and a good 
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• Your sleep can turn into a nightmare 
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• If your replacement disk has bad 
sectors in locations that were good on 
your original drive, the restoration of 
a 'physical image' backup will not 
work as it cannot distinguish bad 
sectors and will attempt to write on 
the bad sectors. You will lose all data 
continuity from that point on!! 



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Inquiry 336 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 275 










Inquiry 296 


INTERFACING 


Pascal and C 

Programmers 


Your programs can 
now compile the 

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identify all syntax errors , undefined 
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to use secondary addresses and, if so. 
what they will mean. The last kind of 
multiline command is a universal 
command. Reasonably enough, uni¬ 
versal commands apply to all devices 
on the bus and are therefore not 
preceded by an address list. The 
universal commands defined by the 
standard include LLO (local lockout), 
which disables instrument front-panel 
control; DCL (device clear), which 
resets all devices to their factory- 
selected default states (this is the 
universal version of SDC); PPU 
(parallel-poll unconfigure), which 
deactivates parallel polling; SPE 
(serial-poll enable), which initiates a 
serial poll; and SPD (serial-poll 
disable), which terminates a serial 
poll. 

The logical difference between the 
uniline commands and the multiline 
commands is that uniline commands 
are unconditioned. That is. they 
operate immediately instead of re¬ 
quiring that the bus be in command 
mode. The last two uniline bus-man¬ 
agement lines illustrate the need for 
such immediacy. REN (remote enable) 
places a device under computer con¬ 
trol. When a device is first going to be 
addressed by the computer, this pro¬ 
vides the 'warm boot'' needed to get 
its attention. IFC (interface clear) is the 
"panic button.'When the controller 
asserts IFC. the active talker must im¬ 
mediately relinquish control of the 
data lines to the computer. As you can 


see. the standard is rather involved. 
But it is not complete. 

HPIB 

The IEEE-488 standard ensures elec¬ 
trical compatibility among instru¬ 
ments. but it does not insure that two 
instruments will understand each 
other. The analogy has been drawn 
between IEEE-488 and the telephone 
system: You can call Rome on your 
telephone, but you may not under¬ 
stand what the person who answers 
the phone is saying. Similarly, the 
IEEE-488 standard does not specify 
the code that is to be used by instru¬ 
ments in transmitting data. Some in¬ 
struments speak binary, some speak 
ASCII, etc. The Hewlett-Packard Cor¬ 
poration has developed a software 
standard for IEEE-488 data that is not 
universally employed. However, it is the 
most common format for data trans¬ 
fers on the bus. The protocol is called 
the Hewlett-Packard Interface Bus 
(HPIB). GPIB and HPIB are often used 
interchangeably but strictly speaking 
GPIB is the IEEE-488 standard and 
HPIB is the conformance to HP's soft¬ 
ware protocol. HPIB specifies the 
following: 

1. All information is transferred in 
ASCII code. 

2. Information is transmitted "left to 
right"; that is, "C A T" is transmitted 
"67 65 84." not "84 65 67." 


( continued ) 


Table 1: IEEE-488 interface management command hit protocols. These apply 

only when the controller asserts ATN. A= 
S ^secondary address hit. N=not used. 

=address hit. C=command hit. 

Data Lines Bit 

Significance 

7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 

N000CCCC 

addressed command 

N001CCCC 

universal command 

N 0 1 A A A A A 

address to listen 

N 1 0 A A A A A 

address to talk 

N 1 1 S S S S S 

secondary address 


276 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 












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Inquiry 107 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 277 








INTERFACING 


The significance of 
a device's program data 
is determined by the 
manufacturer, not 
IEEE-488. 


3. All sequences of data transmission 
end with ASCII 13 (a carriage return) 
and, optionally, ASCII 10 (a linefeed) 
instead of using the EOI line. 

The advantage of the standard is that 
data can be fed directly to a printer 
to produce properly formatted output 
in continuous-data-collection applica¬ 


tions. Of course, the biggest advan¬ 
tage of the standard is simply that it 
is a standard. 

Using the Interface 

So much for the standard. Now let's 
take a look at how to use it. Manufac¬ 
turers of IEEE-488 interface boards 
provide interface drivers for you, so 
using the interface is easier than 
learning about the standard in the first 
place. Usually the interface driver is 
a set of assembly-language routines 
that you can call. In high-speed applic- 
tions you will want an assembly-lan¬ 
guage driver. But in the program I pro¬ 
vide here (listing 1), I use an inter¬ 
preted BASIC driver. The program is 
taken from a course in interfacing I 
taught at Brandeis University. It is 
used to calculate the lattice energy of 
solid argon from temperature and 


pressure data pairs. This is a low- 
speed application, with readings be¬ 
ing taken every 30 seconds. Thus, an 
interpreted BASIC interface driver will 
provide adequate speed. A further 
benefit to me is that students can 
study the driver routines to under¬ 
stand how the interface works, 'fecmar 
also makes an assembly version of its 
interface driver. 

The equipment used in this experi¬ 
ment includes an IBM PC with 128K 
bytes of memory, a Tecmar IEEE-488 
interface for the PC. two HP 3478A 
DMMs with IEEE-488 installed, a 
copper-constantan thermocouple 
wire, and a Barytron 220 pressure 
transducer. The program listing in¬ 
cludes only the data-acquisition part 
of the program, and Tecmar's inter¬ 
face driver routine is not reprinted 
here. Before the experiment can be 
run. the DMMs must be set to their 
respective addresses (17 and 19) by 
DIP switches on the DMM backplanes. 

The program is largely self-ex¬ 
planatory. I will limit my remarks on 
it to points that the listing may not 
make sufficiently clear. Notice the 
statement BD.ADDR°/o=&H310 in 
line 40. This initializes the beginning 
memory location of the 16-byte buf¬ 
fer used for communication between 
the IEEE-488 interface and the com¬ 
puter. MY.ADDR%= 1 in line 60 
declares that the computer's device 
address number will be 1. Both these 
variable names are specified by the 
driver software. Line 110 shows the 
way that the Tbcmar driver routine is 
invoked. The routine begins at line 
10000 and is merged with your appli¬ 
cation program. PARAM$ is the 
variable name for any parameter to 
be passed to the driver routine. In this 
case, the operation performed is ini¬ 
tializing the IEEE board for controller 
operation. In line 130, ADTR is the 
mnemonic for asserting REN. to let 
the DMMs know that they are con¬ 
nected to and will be controlled by 
the computer. Line 150 contains the 
information to be output to the DMM 
that will monitor the pressure trans¬ 
ducer. The significance of this data is 
determined by the DMM manufac- 

(continued) 


Listing 1: A sample data-acquisition routine using the IEEE-488 interface. 

10 REM IEEE-488 PROGRAM FOR HEAT OF SUBLIMATION OF SOLID 
ARGON. PROGRAM SHOULD BE MERGED WITH TECMAR 
IEEE-488 SOFTWARE VER. 3. 

20 REM PROGRAM BY THOMAS CLUNE, BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY 
CHEMISTRY DEPARTMENT 

30 REM DMM #19 READS THE THERMOCOUPLE, DMM #17 READS THE 
PRESSURE TRANSDUCER. 

INITIALIZE IEEE-488 BUFFER LOCATION, DIMENSION ARRAYS 
40 BD.ADDR°/o = &H310.DIM PRES(250):DIM TEMP(250) 

50 REM SPECIFY COMPUTER DEVICE NUMBER, INITIALIZE DATA 
POINTER 

60 MY.ADDR°/o = 1 :DPT = 1 

70 REM WAIT UNTIL READY TO BEGIN RUN PRESSURE READINGS 
MUST BE POSITIVE AND THERMAL EQUILIBRIUM MUST BE 
REACHED BEFORE THE RUN BEGINS. 

80 CLS:PRINT “PRESS ANY KEY WHEN YOU ARE READY TO BEGIN YOUR 
RUN" 

90 A$ « INKEY$:IF AS = THEN 90 

100 REM INITIALIZE BOARD WITH COMPUTER AS CONTROLLER 
110 PARAM$= 1NIT.C/":GOSUB 10000 

120 REM SET BOTH DMM’S FOR REMOTE CONTROL BY COMPUTER 
130 PARAMS= “ADTR/“:GOSUB 10000 

140 REM SET INTERRUPT REGISTERS OF DMM’S FOR SYNTAX ERROR 
AND FRONT PANEL SRQ. 

150 DATA.STRINGS = “KM24D2PRESSURE" 

160 PARAMS * “WR.STR/17/14///":GOSUB 10000 
170 DATA.STRINGS = "KM24D2TEMPERATURE'' 

180 PARAMS -“WR.STR/19/17///":GOSUB 10000 
190 REM ENTER DATA.STRINGS AND WRITE PROGRAMMING 
INFORMATION TO DMM #17. ADD <CR> FOR EOS. 

200 CLS:INPUT “ENTER COMMAND STRING FOR PRES. DMM 
(#17)";DATA.STRINGS 

210 DATA.STRINGS « DATA.STRINGS + CHR$(13) 

220 REM OUTPUT DATA.STRINGS TO DMM 
230 PARAMS = “WR.STR/17//13/EOS/”:GOSUB 10000 

( continued ) 


278 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 










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Inquiry 344 


* Contact BASF for warranty details. 


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1 1983 BASF Systems Corp , Bedford. MA 


BASF 










Inquiry 193 




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INTERFACING 


240 REM CHECK FOR SYNTAX ERROR IN DATA.STRINGS. IF YES, LOOP 
BACK TO REENTER DATA.STRINGS 
250 PARAM$= ”RBST/”:GOSUB 10000 

260 IF SRQ°/o = 1 THEN PARAMS = ”SER.POLL/17/":G0SUB 10000:IF 
POLL.RESP% AND 4 = 4 THEN PRINT “SYNTAX ERROR IN 
COMMAND“:SRQ°/o = 0:GOTO 200 

270 REM IF ERROR< >SYNTAX ERROR, LIST ERROR MESSAGE IN 
OCTAL AND END. 

280 IF SRQ°/o = 1 THEN PRINT “ERROR. STATUS REGISTER (IN 
OCTAL) = “;OCT$(POLL.RESP°/o):END 
290 REM ENTER DATA.STRINGS AND WRITE PROGRAMMING 
INFORMATION TO DMM #19. ADD <CR> FOR EOS. 

300 INPUT “ENTER COMMAND STRING FOR TEMP. DMM 
(#19)“; DATA.STRINGS 

310 DATA.STRINGS = DATA.STRINGS + CHR$(13) 

320 REM OUTPUT DATA.STRINGS TO DMM 
330 PARAMS = “WR.STR/19//13/EOS/“:GOSUB 10000 

340 REM CHECK FOR SYNTAX ERROR IN DATA.STRINGS. IF YES, LOOP 
BACK TO REENTER DATA.STRINGS 
350 PARAMS = “RBST/“:GOSUB 10000 

360 REM IF ERROR< >SYNTAX ERROR, LIST ERROR MESSAGE IN 
OCTAL AND END. 

370 IF SRQ°/o = 1 THEN PARAMS= “SER.P0LL/19/“:G0SUB 10000:IF 
POLL.RESP°/o AND 4 = 4 THEN PRINT “SYNTAX ERROR IN 
COMMAND“:SRQ°/o = O.GOTO 300 
380 IF SRQ°/o = 1 THEN PRINT “ERROR. STATUS REGISTER = (IN 
OCTAL) “;OCT$(POLL.RESP°/o):END 

390 REM BEGINNING OF DATA-ACQUISION LOOP. INITIATE A GROUP- 
EXECUTE TRIGGER TO RECORD THERMOCOUPLE AND 
PRESSURE TRANSDUCER READINGS SIMULTANEOUSLY. 

400 PARAM$ = “GET/17,19/“:G0SUB 10000 
410 REM READ THE DMM VALUES INTO THE COMPUTER 
420 PARAMS =“RD.STR/17//10/EOS/“:GOSUB 10000 
430 REM STORE THE READING IN THE PRESSURE ARRAY. 1 
TORR = lOmV, SO *100 MAKES V = PRES IN TORR. 

440 PRES(DPT) = VAL(DATA.STRINGS)* 100 

450 REM NOTE THAT THE LINE FEED IS USED TO SIGNAL THE END OF 
DATA INSTEAD OF THE LENGTH OF COUNT. LENGTH OF 
COUNT CAUSES AN ERROR CONDITION HERE WITH V.3 
460 PARAMS = "RD.STR/19//10/EOS/“:GOSUB 10000 
470 REM STORE THE READING IN THE TEMPERATURE ARRAY. IF 
TEMP>77K GO TO CALCULATION ROUTINE 
480 TEMP(DPT) = VAL(DATA.STRINGS)* 1000:IF TEMP(DPT)> -5.539 THEN 630 
490 REM CHECK FOR FRONT PANEL SRQ. IF YES, GO TO 
CALCULATION ROUTINE 
500 PARAMS =“RBST/“:GOSUB 10000 
510 IF SRQ%< >1 THEN 550 

520 PARAMS = “SER.POLL/17/“:GOSUB 10000:IF POLL.RESP%< >0 THEN 630 
530 PARAM$=“SER.POLL/19/“:GOSUB 10000 IF POLL.RESP%< >0 THEN 630 
540 REM READ NEW TIME, CHECK ELAPSED TIME 
550 REM TIMES IS RESET TO 0 WHEN RBST CHECKS FOR TIMEOUT 
FAULTS 

560 ENDCLK = VAL(RIGHT$(TIME$,2)):PRINT ENDCLK 

570 REM IF AT LEAST 30 SEC HAVE ELAPSED, GET NEW READING 

580 IF ENDCLK<30 THEN 560 

590 REM CHECK FOR END OF ARRAY. IF YES, JUMP TO CALCULATION 
ROUTINE. OTHERWISE INCREMENT DPT AND COLLECT NEXT 
POINT 

600 IF DPT>249 THEN 630 
610 DPT = DPT + 1 :GOTO 400 

620 REM PRINT DATA AND DO SEMILOG REGRESSION GOES HERE. 

ROUTINE DELETED FOR BYTE ARTICLE. FULL ROUTINE 
AVAILABLE FROM AUTHOR. 


( continued ) 


280 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 290 



















































































DATAEA5E 

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From a feature article in 

BYTE , October 1984 


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c 198S Software Solutions, Inc 












INTERFACING 


The cost of adding 
an IEEE-488 interface 
is nominal and the 


added flexibility 
is not available 


from any other source. 


turer and is not a part of the IEEE-488 
standard. This data is used to pro¬ 
gram the 3478A instead of secondary 
addresses, which the HP does not 
support. The significance of the string 
to the DMM is as follows: K -= "clear 
the maskable interrupt register," M24 
= "set a new mask to generate an 
SRQ if programming data sent to the 
DMM has a syntax error or if the 
front-panel SRQ button is pushed," 
and D2PRESSURE = "display the 
word "PRESSURE" on the DMM's dis¬ 
play panel." Since the pressure¬ 
monitoring DMM and the tempera¬ 
ture-monitoring DMM look exactly the 
same, this prompt ensures that the in¬ 
strument is connected to the right 
transducer. Line 160 has the program¬ 
ming string output to the correct 
DMM. Field 2 of WR.STR specifies the 
device number (17) of the appropriate 
DMM and field 3 says to transmit 14 
characters. That is. the end of se¬ 
quence (EOS) is identified by simply 


counting the number of characters 
transmitted. At the end of 14 charac¬ 
ters. the computer will UNLISTEN the 
DMM to terminate transmission. Line 
200 has the operator input the pro¬ 
gramming information that will 
specify the functions that the 
pressure-monitoring DMM will use. 
Since the number of characters in the 
command string will vary with what 
options the operator selects, we don't 
use a character count to signal EOS 
here. Rather, in line 210 we tack a 
< CR > code onto the end of the data 
and in line 230 specify that the trans¬ 
mission to the DMM should continue 
until "13" (the carriage-return code in 
ASCII) is encountered. Since each 
operator enters the programming in¬ 
formation on each experimental run. 
we want to verify that the DMM string 
does not contain any typographical 
mistakes. Therefore, we read the IEEE- 
bus status (line 2 50) and see whether 
an SRQ flag has been set (line 260). 
Remember that the DMM was pro¬ 
grammed in line 160 to generate an 
SRQ on a syntax error. If an SRQ has 
been sent, we examine the status 
register of the DMM (260 also) to 
make sure that the SRQ was caused 
by a syntax error and. if so. have the 
operator reenter valid programming 
information for the DMM. Note that 
the SRQ does not automatically inter¬ 
rupt the central processing unit. It 
only sets a flag on the IEEE bus. If we 
want to ignore it, all devices that are 
still able to function properly can 
carry on with their business as usual. 


If we want an SRQ to automaticaly in¬ 
terrupt the computer, we can tie the 
SRQ line to an IRQ line. 

Now let s skip to line 400. This ini¬ 
tiates a group-enable trigger for both 
DMMs (numbers 17 and 19). Thus, our 
pressure and temperature data read¬ 
ings are triggered at the same time 
and are truly simultaneous. In line 
420. we read the pressure DMM data 
into the pressure array PRES. Charac¬ 
ter 10. a linefeed, is used as an EOS 
by the DMM and is so declared in line 
420. Lines 500 through 530 check to 
see if an SRQ was sent by any device 
and, if so, conducts a serial poll. This 
is done because the program allows 
the experimenter to interrupt the ex¬ 
periment at any time by pressing a 
front-panel button on either DMM. 
The program will then treat the data 
collected up to that time as the com¬ 
plete data set and begin the data 
analysis routine. If there was no SRQ. 
the program waits 30 seconds, checks 
to make sure that the data arrays are 
not about to overflow, and then takes 
another data reading. 

The program presented above is a 
very simple routine. However, even 
this basic level of process control is 
very difficult to achieve on interfaces 
other than the IEEE-488. If you have 
a choice, you should begin reshaping 
your lab to support IEEE-488 interfac¬ 
ing. As you replace outdated or 
broken equipment, the cost of adding 
an IEEE-488 interface is nominal and 
the added flexibility is not available 
from any other source. ■ 


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282 BYTE- FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 198 



























The PC Plotter: 

It will change the way 
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As to our performance, we're 
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offering you hundreds 
of graphics software 
packages which are 


DQ®DaSS®DQ 

instrument 




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*U.S. suggested list price. 


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For the name of your closest PC Plotter 
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In Europe, contact Houston Instrument, Belgium 
NV., Rochesterlaan 6, 8240 Gistel, Belgium. 
Tel. 059-27-74-45, Tlx. 846-81399. 


Inquiry 139 


> 






’<sz 


% 
















Kodak 


certified 


284 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 





INTRODUCING NEW KODAK DISKETTES 


For as long as anyone can remember, the 
world has trusted Kodak film to capture its 
memories. Now the world can trust legend¬ 
ary Kodak quality to capture its computer 
data. 

Introducing Kodak diskettes. And the 
beginning of a new legend. 

We know you expect nothing less than 
extraordinary performance from a Kodak 
product. We didn’t disappoint you. 

These remarkable new diskettes 
are so thoroughly tested, they’re cer¬ 
tified error-free. 

Every Kodak diskette has 
a highly burnished head 
surface for optimum 
read-write accuracy. 

And every standard 
diskette is made to 


) Eastman Kodak Company, 1984 
Inquiry 346 



withstand 4Vi million passes before significant 
wear occurs. 

With accuracy and durability like that, we 
can offer this no-questions-asked replace¬ 
ment policy: 

This KODAK Diskette will be free from man¬ 
ufacturing defects, or we will replace it. 

Kodak diskettes for home and business PC 
use are available in standard 8- and SM-inch 
formats, high-density 5V4-inch diskettes, and 
3 Vi-inch micro diskettes in our 
HD 600 Series. 

New Kodak diskettes. Be¬ 
cause the only thing that can 
follow a legend is another 
legend. 



KODAK. 

The name says it all. 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 285 




















/ 































BITE 


R mews 


Reviewers Notebook EVEN WITH ITS MULTIPLE-KEYSTROKE FUNCTIONS and non-mnemonic 

by Glenn Hartwig .289 commands, WordStar has retained its reputation as a powerful and popular 

NewWord word processor. Now some of the people who developed WordStar have got- 

by John Wellborn and Nanci Reel .291 ten together and written a package designed to capitalize on WordStar's 

Janus/Ada strengths while addressing its weaknesses. Called NewWard, this program from 

by Mark ]. Welch . 295 NewStar Software has strengths and weaknesses of its own. In our first review 

The Epson Geneva px-8 this month. John Heilborn and Nanci Reel take a close look at whether it fails 

by Rich Malloy . 302 or succeeds in its objectives. 

Two Modula-2 Compilers Next, Mark Welch gives us his investigations of Janus/Ada. A nonstandard 

for the IBM PC subset of Ada for MS-DOS and CP/M-80, Janus/Ada lacks a lot of features that 

by Kevin Bowyer 311 gj ve Ada its special character and utility. On the other hand, its fundamental 

e-mail for the Masses structure is that of Ada's, and it can give you a definite head start in your 

by Wayne Rash Jr. .317 attempts to pick up a new and complex programming language. 

Mannesmann Tally mt 160 The Geneva PX-8 is Epson's lap-size computer. These small machines look 

by Mark j. Welch . 325 now to b e a permanent feature of the microcomputing landscape. The PX-8's 

Review Feedback 331 credentials are impressive: a CMOS Z80. 96K bytes of two kinds of memory, 

an 8 by 80 LCD, and a comprehensive list of bundled software for less (just 
less) than $1000. Still, what we've seen for some time are systems that do 
very similar things with their major difference being price. How well can one 
of these briefcase computers help you work? Rich Malloy has taken a hard 
look at the PX-8. His review this month shows you what you can expect. 

When confronted with a choice between two products designed to do the 
same thing, do you ever find yourself asking why one costs more than 10 
times as much as the other—and is it worth it? A case in point is demonstrated 
in this month's review of "TWo Modula-2 Compilers for the IBM PC' Both are 
adaptations of the original Swiss compiler and neither is a trivial implemen¬ 
tation. Why then does one cost $40 and the other $495? Is the more expen¬ 
sive product necessarily the better product? While not primarily a comparison 
on a cost basis, Kevin Bowyer's review provides good evidence about what 
each compiler can do. 

Another comparative review is offered by Wayne Rash Jr. in his look at MCI 
Mail and EasyLink. In theory, electronic-mail services have a lot to recom¬ 
mend them. Why haven't they caught on as well as their advance billing a 
few years ago would lead us. to expect? Both of these packages are full ser¬ 
vices. and each has been heavily promoted. Do you want one to call your 
own? If so, do you want either of these? Good questions. Mr. Rash provides 
some good answers. 

Closing out this month's review section. Mark Welch provides a straightfor¬ 
ward look at a straightforward product. Mannesmann Tally's latest printer, the 
MT160. has a variety of print modes, speeds, configuration capabilities, and 
programmable features. Mark Welch details the MT 160 and gives you as good 
an idea as anyone could about what this machine will and won't do. 

—Glenn Hartwig, Technical Editor, Reviews 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 287 


1 
















GVT+ 


ffT twwmn-j c i 


Display Terminal 


A Picture’s Worth 


SHIPMENTS (S BILLIONS) 


** bKHrnllb USABILITIES tt 


1^- MAINFRAMES 
| | - MINICOMPUTERS 

MICROCOMPUTERS 


** DISPLAY TERMINAL CAPABILITIES tt 


♦ HIGH PERFORMANCE GRAPHICS 

♦ TEKTRONIX 4010 COMPATIBILITY 

♦ AUTOMATIC SCALING (1023x1023) 
WITH 250x512 RESOLUTION 

♦ ALPHA HODE (35 LINES x 73 COLS) 

♦ OPTIONAL JOYSTICK 

♦ CONNECTION TO LOW COST PRINTER 
FOR GRAPHICS HAROCOPY 

♦ ASCII AND APL CHARACTER SETS 

♦ BLOCK FILL, DOTTED/DASHED LINES 


♦ ANSI STANDARD CONFORMANCE 

♦ DEC SOFTWARE COMPATIBILITY 

♦ 80/132 COLUHNS, WINDOWING 

♦ 4 PAGES OF HEHORY STANDARDS TO 8) 

♦ 46 PROGRAHHABLE FUNCTIONS 

♦ ASCII AND APL HODELS 

♦ COHPACTJLTRA-THIN KEYBOARD 
LL’TION AHBER PHOSPHOR 


human 

designed 

systems, 

inc. 


'Small quantity price 


Whether used in video display mode or in its high-performance graphics mode, 
Human Designed Systems' GVT+™ Graphics Display Terminal offers more user 
friendliness, more design features, and more advanced functionality to optimize 
productivity — and encourage creativity — for the terminal operator, interactive 
user, and applications developer than any other terminal available today. 


Inquiry 140 

GVT+ is a trademark of 
Human Designed Systems. Inc 


Atlanta - (404) 391-9763; Boston - (617) 449-6446; Chicago - (312) 825-2960; Dallas - (214) 437-1888; Delaware - Infocon: (3021239-2942; Denver — 
(303)469-1953; Detroit — (313) 471-2807; Hawaii — Gray Associates: (808) 261-3751; Houston — (713)952-1403; Los Angeles — (213)410-9454; Northern 
New Jersey — Infocon: (201) 624-1372; New York City Area — Infocon: (212) 689-8833; New York State — Naco Electronics. Rochester: (716) 223-4490; 
Syracuse (315) 699-2651; San Francisco — (415) 692-4184; Washington, DC — International Systems Marketing (301) 279-5775; Argentina — ItronSA 
(01) 774-9369; Australia — Computer Clarity Pty Ltd.: (02) 241 3385; Belgium — BELCOMP: 091-31.52.22; Canada — CALL Systems: Toronto: 
(416) 362-1063; Denmark — ADCOM Data Aps 1-19 44 66; Finland — Valtamatic Oy 0-742 011; France — Walton: (1) 226.06 90; Japan — Ampere: 
03 (365) 0825; Portugal - Soc. Com Crocker, DeUaforce Co Ltd.: 1-6801 41; Singapore - DTS Singapore: 33-88-566; South Africa - Psitec (Pty.) Ltd.: 
(11) 836-9181; Switzerland - Mitek ag: 01/461 22 52; United Kingdom - ShandeU Systems Ltd.: 2407-2027; Venezuela - H. Blohm SA 2 541.21.22; West 
Germany -COMKO Computersystemges. mbH: 221-48 30 51 INTERNATIONAL DISTRIBUTORSHIP INQUIRIES INVITED. 








REVIEWER’S NOTEBOOK 


T wo software packages for labora¬ 
tory data acquisition tie in 
with this month's theme, computing 
in the sciences. Up for future review 
are Labtech Notebook, from Labora¬ 
tory Technologies Corp.. 328 Broad¬ 
way. Cambridge. MA 02139, (617) 
497-1010; and Asyst, from Macmillan 
Software Co.. 866 Third Ave., New 
York. NY 10022. (212) 702-3241. Also 
slated for closer scrutiny in upcoming 
issues is the software provided by 
various A/D (analog-to-digital) board 
manufacturers. Those companies in¬ 
clude Tbcmar, 622 5 Cochran Rd.. 
Cleveland, OH 44139, (216) 349-0600, 
maker of the Labmaster board; and 
Data Translation, 100 Locke Dr., 
Marlboro. MA 01752, (617) 481-3700. 
While the A/D board makers seem to 
concentrate on producing driver soft¬ 
ware, the two packages first men¬ 
tioned are integrated data-acquisition 
and data-analysis software. 

Beginning with hardware require¬ 
ments. there are key differences be¬ 
tween the two main packages. The 
Labtech Notebook (which Data 
Translation also markets, under the 
name DT Notebook) can use the Intel 
8087 math coprocessor chip; the 
Asyst package requires it. 

There are other differences between 
the two. Asyst supports complex 
number types, while Labtech Note¬ 
book does not. Asyst includes a wide 
variety of statistical-analysis options, 
while Labtech Notebook is more 
limited. Asyst includes routines to 
calculate polynomials, to operate on 
vectors and matrices (including matrix 
Aversions), to determine the eigen- 
r alues and eigenvectors of a matrix, 
-) fit data to curves using least- 
luares approximations and multi¬ 
ear regression, and to do fast 
urier transforms (including two- 
lensional forward and inverse 
sforms). Labtech Notebook lacks 


these sophisticated mathematical 
functions. Arguing on behalf of 
Labtech Notebook is its ability to con¬ 
tinuously stream input data to disk up 
to the limit of mass-storage space. Ad¬ 
ditionally, Labtech Notebook (written 
in FORTH-like MAGIC/L) is menu- 
driven and easy to use. while Asyst is 
a FORTH extension and requires the 
use of FORTH syntax, making it more 
difficult for some people to use. Final¬ 
ly, Labtech Notebook supports a 
wider variety of A/D boards. Both 
packages, however, support curve 
fitting. 

Labtech Notebook uses Lotus 1-2-3 
or similar products to do its graphing 
(except for real-time graphing, which 
is built in) and requires a spreadsheet 
or user-written program to perform 
data analysis. What is good about this 
is that the data files are written in 
comma-delimited ASCII (American 
Standard Code for Information Inter¬ 
change). which could be transported 
to most other software packages that 
include a user-written analysis routine. 
What is not so good is that we don't 
know many scientists who can so easi¬ 
ly write good graphing routines that 
they actually want to spend time do¬ 
ing it. Further, Lotus 1-2-3 has been 
characterized as inappropriate for 
creating sophisticated analysis pro¬ 
grams. You'll need to take a serious 
look at this Labtech Notebook/Lotus 
1-2-3 interdependency if you're con¬ 
sidering it for your application. Right 
now. being tied into Lotus's graphing 
capabilities strikes a number of peo¬ 
ple around here as providing less 
functionality than needed for serious 
laboratory data analysis. 

Nor is Asyst a likely ‘’white knight" 
for the scientist. Thje, it has everything 
you could want except continuous 
data acquisition, but it is so hard to 
use that some of the company's own 
demonstrators seemed to have 


learned their presentations by rote. At 
a recent demonstration in Washing¬ 
ton, DC, they wouldn't vary the input 
data at the suggestion of the 
audience. 

Neither of these packages is cheap. 
Asyst comes in three separate 
modules and is priced at $1695 when 
all three are bundled together. The 
first module contains the system/ 
graphics/statistics routines, is required 
to run the other two modules, and 
costs $795. The second module 
handles data analysis and costs $495. 
The third takes care of data ac¬ 
quisition and sets you back another 
$495. 

Labtech Notebook is a single pack¬ 
age and is less expensive in strictly 
relative terms—$795. The catch is that 
you have to provide your own Lotus 
1-2-3. 

R eporters are slowly realizing that 
system crackers cannot magical¬ 
ly break into any computer. They are 
more likely invited in by poorly 
designed security measures. One of 
the devices that has arisen from this 
purported problem is the call-back 
modem, a device that allows access 
only from a group of specially 
selected phone numbers. And the first 
to arrive here at BYTE is the GTX-100 
secure modem, from Lockheed- 
GETEX, 86 South Cobb Dr., Marietta, 
GA 30063. This modem, which sells 
for about $1000, can be set up so that 
nobody can call in to the system 
directly. You merely give it a password 
and the modem will then call you 
back after referring to a list of phone 
numbers in its memory. Unfortunate¬ 
ly. the modem is not completely com¬ 
patible with the Hayes modem, so 
some software may not work with it. 
but it seems to be a pretty interesting 
idea. 

—Glenn H artwig, Technical Editor, Reviews 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 289 








Hayes sets the standard 
for personal computer 

communications. Again. 
Smartmodem 2400. 



The new fast mover from 
Hayes. The telecomputing 
leader. When it comes to commu¬ 
nications products for personal 
computers, we're the leader! Hayes 
Smartmodem 1200" set the indus¬ 
try standards for quality, reliability 
and performance. 

Now our new. faster Smartmodem 
2400 goes even further to lower 
telephone line costs and improve 
user productivity. So. at twice the 
speed of a 1200 bps modem, it 
quickly pays for itself in any high- 
volume communications operation. 

Smartmodem 2400 provides a quick 
link to minis and mainframes. Both 
synchronous and asynchronous 
transmissions are supported by an 
advanced version of the well-known 
Hayes "AT" command set. You can 
download from the IBM mainframe 
at the home office. Send data to 
the mini upstairs. And guarantee 
accurate transmission with infor¬ 
mation services. 


With worldwide communications 
in mind. Smartmodem 2400 was 
designed to meet CCITT interna¬ 
tional standards. It provides a fast, 
cost-effective way to transmit data 
between approved countries. 

New version of Hayes 
Smartcom II® communications 
software creates a complete tele¬ 
computing system with Smart- 
moaem 2400. Our new Smartcom 
II. Version 2.1. is available for the 
IBM* PC and many popular com¬ 
patibles. Smartcom II makes the 
most of Smartmodems exceptional 
features, at the same time it makes 
communicating easy for you. And. 
if you're currently using an earlier 
version of Smartcom II. Hayes of¬ 
fers a $25 upgrade to Version 2.1. 

So if you're looking for ways to 
streamline your communications, 
see your authorized Hayes dealer 
right away For a hands-on demon¬ 
stration of Smartcom II and our new 
Smartmodem 2400. Guaranteed to 
get you moving fast! 


Hayes Microcomputer 
Products. Inc., 5923 Peachtree 
Industrial Blvd., Norcross. Georgia 
30092. 404/441-1617. 


Smartmodem 2400 

• Direct connect • Asynchronous 
and synchronous communications 

• Accommodates Hayes-compat¬ 
ible modems of slower speeds 

• Meets CCITT worldwide stan¬ 
dards • Keyboard control of all 
communications parameters • High 
speed indicator • Voice/data 
capabilities • Call progress moni¬ 
toring • TWo-year limited warranty 
with optional four-year extended 
warranty available. 

Smartcom II 

• Hayes Verification and XMODEM 
protocols • Emulates DEC* VT52 
and VT100/102 • Totally unat¬ 
tended operation • Voice/data 
capabilities. 



Smartcom II is a registered trademark and Smartmodem 24(X)and Smartmodem 1200 are trademarks of Hayes Microcomputer Products. Inc 
•TYademarksof their respective companies ©1985 Hayes Microcomputer Products Inc 


290 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 133 






SOFTWARE REVIEW 



NewWord 


A WordStar 
clone with 
significant 

improvements 

by John Heilborn 
and Nanci Reel 


J ohn Heilborn (POB 20102. Castro 
Valley. CA 94546) is president of 
ThinkWorks I nc.. and N and Reel 
(6700 Southwest 105 th St.. Suite 
200. Beaverton. OR 97005) is a 
technical writer for Teneron 
Corporation. 


W ordStar, the archetypal word 
processor, is a versatile text- 
manipulating tool, but it can be 
difficult to master. NewWord, developed by 
NewStar Software, retains the strengths that 
have made WordStar popular while ad¬ 
dressing most of WordStar's shortcomings. 

NewWord. available for the IBM PC, PC- 
compatibles. and CP/M-80 systems, is priced 
at $249. Functionally, NewWord is similar to 
WordStar—it was. in fact, designed by some 
of the same people—but it is not merely a 
WordStar clone. And although it is not 
perfect. NewWord offers some significant 
advantages over WordStar. 

WordStar's delete commands (Control-G, 
Control-T, Control-Y) are permanently 
destructive; when you delete something, it's 
gone forever. If you change your mind (or 
if you erase accidentally), you need to 
retype. To make matters worse, Control-Y 
(delete line) is right next to Control-T (delete 
word), so you can easily delete an entire line 
by mistake. 

NewWord has an undo command (Con- 
trol-U) and an "unerase" buffer. This com¬ 
mand will usually undo whatever the last 
command did. For example, it will unerase 
a block that you erased with the command 
Control-KY. You can set the size of the 
unerase buffer during installation. Its 
original setting is 2 55 characters, or about 
10 words. 

When you request a document to edit, 
WordStar does not check to make sure that 
you typed the name correctly. If you 
misspell a document name, WordStar 
assumes that you want to create a new 
document. You have to abandon your mis¬ 
spelled file with Control-KQ. On the other 
hand. NewWord looks for the document and 
asks for verification if the entered name 
does not match a file in the disk directory. 
This eliminates abandoning empty files in¬ 
advertently created when you try to retrieve 
an existing document for editing. 

When WordStar saves a file during editing 
(Control-KS), the cursor returns to the top 


of the document, not to where you were 
editing. You must then use Control-QP to 
move the cursor back. NewWord returns the 
cursor to your editing location without extra 
keystrokes. 

Print Features 

In general, WordStar displays a document 
on the screen that looks exactly the way the 
printed page will look. Unfortunately, it also 
displays the control commands that you 
have to insert before and after text to turn 
boldface, underline, and other print features 
on and off. WordStar does have a special 
command that hides these commands, but 
it prevents you from seeing the control 
codes. You might forget where they are or 
leave out a trailing command and, for ex¬ 
ample, italicize the remainder of your 
document. 

NewWord can display special print op¬ 
tions such as boldface, underline, and 
strikeover on the screen if your terminal 
supports this capability. And NewWord's 
search function recognizes these embed¬ 
ded print control characters. For example, 
you can find all the boldfaced words and 
change them to underlined words; with 
WordStar, you have to conduct such a 
search visually without program support. 

Another feature WordStar lacks is the 
ability to print more than one copy of a 
document at a time unless you buy the 
MailMerge program at extra cost. NewWord, 
however, includes the option of printing 
multiple copies of a document via a selec¬ 
tion from the print menu. Also, you do not 
need an extra program to create form let¬ 
ters and perform other mergeprinting tasks. 
NewWord has a merge-print function with 
features and commands similar to Micro¬ 
Pro’s MailMerge. and advanced features 
such as conditional merge-print commands. 

Rulers and Headers 

WordStar has other shortcomings that 
might be visible only to advanced users. For 

( continued) 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 291 








REVIEW: NEWWORD 


AT A GLANCE 


Name 

NewWord 

Type 

Word-processing software 

Manufacturer 

NewStar Software Inc. 

1601 Oak Park Blvd. 

Pleasant Hill, CA 94523 
(415) 932-2278 

Price 

$249 

Format 

5V4-inch floppy disk, PC-DOS (MS-DOS) 
and CP/M 


Language 

8080 machine language or 8086/8088 
machine language 

Computer 

MS-DOS- and CP/M-80-based 
microcomputers 

Documentation 

420-page manual, Read Me First (23 
pages), Pocket Reference flyer, and disk 
tutorial 

Audience 

Business and home users of microcom¬ 
puter word-processing software who re¬ 
quire advanced features 



U NEWWORD I I WORDSTAR 3.3 \///A VOLKSWRITER DELUXE 


Document Load measures how long it takes 
each word processor to load a standard 
4000-word document from disk. Document 
Save measures how long it takes to save 


the document to disk. Search measures the 
time it takes to find the last word in the docu¬ 
ment. Scroll measures how long it takes to 
scroll through the document manually. 


example, in WordStar a "ruler" in¬ 
dicates left and right margins and tab 
stops. If you use several rulers within 
a document, you must embed each 
ruler in the text of your document. 
Each time you edit a document with 
several rulers, you must use a special 
command to turn on the new rulers 
as you encounter them. 

NewWord allows more flexible use 
of multiple rulers. When you edit, 
NewWord automatically changes the 
ruler line every time it encounters a 
new ruler (when moving either for¬ 
ward or backward through a file). The 
command ControI-OO inserts a copy 
of the current ruler into your text, and 
the factory setting lets you use up to 
six rulers per file, although you can in¬ 
crease the number during installation. 

NewWord also lets you use up to 
three lines in page headings and foot¬ 
ings. where WordStar limits you to 
single lines. 

Printer Installation 

WordStar operates with a wide vari¬ 
ety of printers but usually does not 
take advantage of their most sophis¬ 
ticated capabilities, such as propor¬ 
tional spacing (with microjustification) 
and italics, without assembly-lan¬ 
guage patches to the printer drivers. 
Also, if you have more than one 
printer hooked up to your system (for 
example, a dot-matrix printer for 
drafts and a letter-quality printer for 
final copies), you need to customize 
a WordStar disk for each printer and 
load the appropriate one. 

NewWord lets you attach more than 
one printer to your computer and 
select the right one when you are 
ready to print. NewWord accom¬ 
plishes this with multiple printer 
drivers, including dot-matrix, letter- 
quality, and electronic typewriter 
drivers, which are available as over¬ 
lays. This package uses the advanced 
capabilities of the printers supported, 
including microjustification, variable 
character width and line height, and 
alternate pitches on the same line. 

Other Features 

NewWord's IBM PC version (with DOS 
2.0 or higher) protects a document 


292 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 



















































































REVIEW: NEW WORD 


when you use the opening menu's C 
command. You cannot edit or delete 
a protected document. 

NewWord also lets you find a par¬ 
ticular page using Control-QP. 

The Control-T command (delete 
word) works differently in NewWord 
than in WordStar. WordStar treats a 
punctuation mark as part of a word; 
if you use Control-T to delete the word 
"end.'' the trailing period is deleted 
with the word. NewWord deletes the 
word but not the period. 

A minor difference between New¬ 
Word and WordStar is that NewWord's 
left-arrow key is a destructive back¬ 
space (WordStar's is nondestructive). 

Finally in NewWord you can set the 
right margin to 2 55 (WordStar's limit 
is 240). The wider margin is not signifi¬ 
cant for most applications, but it 
might be important in yours. 

Disadvantages 

You have to give up some WordStar 
features for NewWord's improve¬ 
ments. For example, you can't print a 
document while editing (Control-KP). 
This is NewWord's most serious flaw. 
Even when you use a print spooler, 
printing a long document requires a 
fair amount of time before the pro¬ 
gram accepts additional input. 

You can change logged disks while 
editing, but NewWord can't turn on 
the file directory (Control-KF in Word¬ 
Star). so you can't see what's on your 
disk. For a way around this, issue the 
command Control-K) (delete file). 
NewWord will display the directory of 
the currently logged disk and prompt 
you for the name of the file to delete. 
You can check the directory of the 
currently logged disk and cancel the 
command with Control-U; NewWord 
won't delete anything. 

The R command, which temporarily 
returns you to DOS and runs a pro¬ 
gram. is missing from NewWord. and 
NewStar Software has no plans to add 
it to NewWord's vocabulary. If you 
want to format a blank disk from 
within NewWord. you're out of luck. 

Another missing command is Word¬ 
Star's "repeat this key'' (Control-Q 
Control-Q*). Also, NewWord doesn't 
separate program messages and text 


clearly, which often makes the screen 
display confusing. 

Using NewWord 

Like WordStar, NewWord uses a multi- 
ple-menu-oriented command struc¬ 


ture. but because NewWord’s menus 
are less cluttered, they are easier to 
read (see photo 1). 

When you begin program execu¬ 
tion. NewWord presents an opening 

( continued ) 


Jewstar_Demo_-Jotjor Sale „ 

5 P ElFTTC 

D get a document to change, 
create a new document 
N create or change non-document 
P print a document 
H merge print a document 
C protect a document 
X all done with Newword (exit) 


L change logged disk drive 
E rename a document 
0 copy a document 
Y delete a document 
F turn directory off 
J help 




not editing 

( ( < OPEN 
—Preliminary Commands— 

L Change logged disk drive 
F File directory now ON 
H Set help level 
—Commands to open a file— 
D Open a document file 
N Open a non-document file 


OPENING NE N U > > > 
nds— ! —File Commands— 


PRINT a file 


RENAME a file 
COPY a file 
DELETE a file 


-System Commands- 
R Run a program 
X EXII to system 

-WordStar Options- 
N Run MailNerge 
S Run SpellStar 


Photo 1: (a) NeuAM ord's opening menu compared with ( b ) WordStar’s no-file menu. 


_jb:iesi_ 


CURSOR SCROLL 

A E up C up 

A X down A 2 down 

A S left A R up scr 

A D right K down 

C word left screen 

A F word right 
L—t—?—t—f— 


J01JLMC01 Insert 
EDIT ME 
,L ERASE 
■C char A , 

A T word A ! 


SCROLL ERAS 
C up C char 
A Z down A I word 
A R up screen A Y line 
K down DEL left 


ERASE OTHER E 
*G char A J help C oi 
A I word A I tah A K s 
A Y line C insert off A P p 
>EL left A B align paray C g 
C unerase ^ paragraph line 

A L find/reylace again 


EXTENSIONS 
C on-screen format 
A K saving d Blocks 
A P print controls 
C quick functions 


AlIESI PAGE 1 LINE 4 COL 01 INSERT ON 

< < < MAIN MENU > > > 

-Cursor Movement— ! -Delete- 1 -Miscellaneous- 1 -Other Heous- 
A S char left A D char right !*G char I A I Tah A B Reform I (from Main only) 

*A word left A F word right IDEL chr If I 'HI INSERT ON/OFF ! A J Help A K Block 

A E line up A X line down ! A I word rt! A L Find/Replce again !C Quick A P Print 
-Scrolling- ! A Y line IRETURN End paragraphic Onscreen 
A Z line down C line up I I ^ Insert a REiURN I 

C screen up A R screen down! I C Stop a command ! 

.—t—t—t—♦—t—t—*—f—t—t—♦-p 


A E line up A X line down ! A I 
-Scrolling-- ! A Y 
A Z line down C line up I 
C screen up A R screen down! 

I —♦—t—t—|—t—t 


Photo 2: (a) NeuAV ord's edit menu compared with (b) WordStar's main menu. 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 293 


















REVIEW: NEWWORD 


menu (older versions of WordStar call 
this a no-file menu). You select one of 
the activities listed by typing a single 
character. 

If you select D or N. you enter edit 
mode (see photo 2). Once you are in 
the edit mode, the edit menu (called 
the main menu in WordStar) appears 
on the screen. From this menu, you ac¬ 
cess commands by pressing the Con¬ 
trol key and entering a character. The 
four commands labeled EXTENSIONS 
(Control-O. Control-K. Control-P. and 
Control-Q) are for submenus. Pressing 
these commands calls submenus that 
let you select the third character re¬ 
quired for each command sequence. 
If you are familiar with NewWord. you 
can enter the commands without 
waiting for the submenus. 

Fortunately. NewWord can read and 
edit WordStar files without conversion 
or translation. The program can also 
use some of the same auxiliary pro¬ 
grams: for example, we use the same 
print spooler we use with WordStar. 

Performance 

We tested NewWord version 1.29. 
which is available for the IBM PC and 
compatibles (we used a PC. PCjr, and 
Compaq) and for CP/M-80 systems 
(we used a Morrow MD-11). Some im¬ 
proved versions are available: version 
1.40 for the IBM PC and compatibles 
is slightly faster than 1.29 and con¬ 
tains some minor program changes, 
and version 2.0 for CP/M-80 systems 
contains the column block-move fea¬ 
ture, which NewStar reports will be 
available soon (two to three weeks) for 
IBM PC users. | Editor’s note: We used New¬ 
Word version 1.43 to perform our benchmark 
tests. | 

Unlike WordStar, NewWord uses no 


overlays except the printer driver. In 
cases where WordStar must load an 
overlay to perform a function. New¬ 
Word's performance is faster. Overall 
though, we judge WordStar to be 
faster than NewWord on the IBM PC 
and compatibles and slightly slower 
on the CP/M computers. See table 1 
for data on the IBM PC. and John 
Heilborn's article "The Morrow 
MD-11" (September 1984 BYTE, page 
32 5) for benchmarks using CP/M sys¬ 
tems (in table 2, page 334). 

Installation 

The NewWord installation procedure 
is long (13 pages of step-by-step in¬ 
structions) and critical, because the 
custom installation procedure is also 
the copy-protection scheme. Prior to 
this installation (called ‘unlocking ") 
the software won't run on any com¬ 
puter. In order to unlock the software, 
you have to call a special 800 number 
maintained by NewStar. After unlock¬ 
ing. the software runs only on the 
machine on which it was installed. 

The unlocking procedure is de¬ 
scribed in Read Me First, a 13-step in¬ 
struction guide accompanying New¬ 
Word. The steps are clearly stated and 
even an inexperienced novice could 
follow the guidelines. 

To customize NewWord to fit your 
own needs. NewStar has included a 
utility called NWINSTAL. a customiza¬ 
tion program. Like NewWord. 
NWINSTAL is menu-driven. Some 
users will need to use the utility to in¬ 
stall special terminals and printers 
(the default terminal is a TeleVideo 
92 5). The program is easy to use and 
well documented; the menus are 
comprehensive but not intimidating. 
NewWord's many customization op¬ 


tions are described in the manual's 
Nuts and Bolts section. The organiza¬ 
tion of this section could use work 
(and there are several typographical 
errors) but. in general, the guidelines 
for using NWINSTAL are clear. 

NewWord includes another utility 
program called NWCOLOR that lets 
you customize the screen display for 
a color monitor. You can select any 
one of eight colors for the foreground 
and background of text display, as 
well as high intensity (boldface), blink¬ 
ing, and blinking boldface mode for 
the foreground. You can display text 
in seven different ways and change 
any or all of them. NWCOLOR makes 
it easy to play with possibilities. 

Documentation 

NewWord's documentation includes a 
420-page manual divided into three 
major sections: Do It Yourself, a 
tutorial that is organized into 12 sec¬ 
tions. each covering important word¬ 
processing tasks; Nuts and Bolts, a 
customization guide; and NewWord 
Encyclopedia, a reference manual. 
The manual was written for the CP/M 
version and has not been updated for 
the MS-DOS version, so it does not 
include the information required to 
make full use of some of NewWord's 
enhancements (such as built-in special 
printer drivers and programmable 
function keys). 

NewWord also includes the afore¬ 
mentioned Read Me First, a disk tutorial 
for word-processing novices, a Pocket 
Reference flyer, and a Do-It-Yourself 
supplement that describes condi¬ 
tional merge-print dot commands. 

Conclusions 

NewWord has some features Word¬ 
Star users have longed for (such as 
sophisticated yet flexible printer con¬ 
trol and the undo command, which 
reverses whatever you just did). How¬ 
ever, NewWord is not perfect. It can 
be slower than WordStar and it 
doesn't have some of the capabilities 
you might be dependent on if you've 
used WordStar more than casually. 
But at $249. NewWord is useful 
enough so that the lack of a few fea¬ 
tures is tolerable. ■ 


Table 1: A comparison of benchmarks for NeuAM ord. WordStar, and Volkswriter 
Deluxe. 


Benchmark 

NewWord 1.43 

WordStar 3.3 

Volkswriter Deluxe 

Document Load 

19.76 

9.9 

22.0 

Document Save 

23.17 

24.9 

21.9 

Search 

10.75 

10.5 

7.0 

Scroll 

1:21.45 

41.2 

30.1 


294 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 





SOFTWARE REVIEW 



]muslAda 


A useful 
nonstandard 
tool for 
learning Ada 

by Mark J. Welch 


Mark ). Welch is a BYTE staff 
writer. He can be contacted at POB 
372. Hancock. NH 03449. 


A da is the U.S. Department of 
Defense's "Language of the 
Future." Although the DOD 
ordered that all defense contractors use 
Ada beginning this year, a lack of available, 
proven compilers has delayed its wide use. 
Whether or not you agree with the DOD 
that Ada is the best language, it will soon 
be the language of preference for govern¬ 
ment work. The DOD hopes that using a 
single standardized language will reduce 
maintenance costs for software. 

Microcomputer owners seeking to learn 
Ada will likely feel a sense of despair, since 
the compilers available for microcomputers 
are either partial implementations or non¬ 
standard subsets of the full Ada language. 

RR Software’s Janus/Ada (version 1.4.7) is 
a nonstandard subset of Ada for MS-DOS 
and CP/M-80. Janus lacks most of the fea¬ 
tures that distinguish Ada from other high- 
level languages, and it includes a number 
of nonstandard features. 

However. Janus is a useful tool for learn¬ 
ing about a complex programming lan¬ 
guage; those who have tried realize how 
hard it is to learn any programming lan¬ 
guage by reading even the best books or 
magazines. For a written overview of Ada, 
see Sabina H. Saib's two-part tutorial, An' 
Ada Language Primer," in lune 1984 BYTE, 
page 131, and July 1984, page 139. 

I used the MS-DOS version of lanus for 
the IBM PC. I am not an experienced Ada 
programmer; most Janus/Ada buyers will 
probably be in the same situation. 

Ada was originally designed for real-time 
applications like guiding missiles or pro¬ 
cessing radar data. 1 don't have access to 
guided missiles and Janus doesn't imple¬ 
ment Ada's concurrent tasking, so 1 wrote 
sample programs exercising Ada's useful¬ 
ness as a general-purpose language. Since 
lanus doesn’t have built-in graphics libraries. 

I wrote a simple text-based adventure game. 

I had written a similar adventure game in 
BASIC in about 10 hours. Programming the 
game in Janus/Ada took quite a bit longer, 


perhaps due to my lack of experience. How¬ 
ever, the resulting code was more struc¬ 
tured and easier to understand and update 
later. 

I am familiar with Pascal, the language 
Ada most resembles. Pascal programmers 
should have an easier time learning Ada 
than those experienced in other, less struc¬ 
tured languages. A warning, though: the 
similarity between the languages is also 
confusing. I was often slow to locate an 
error because the illegal lanus/Ada line 
resembled valid Pascal code. 

Included with the compiler are several 
sample Janus/Ada programs translated from 
Pascal. While none of the programs are 
noteworthy, they show how some functions 
are implemented. 

After compiling several of the included 
packages, I wrote a simple program of my 
own to print a message, read a line of text, 
and echo it. It took four hours and a phone 
call to RR Software before I could compile 
the program. 

Janus is not Ada 

Janus is not an entirely accurate subset of 
Ada. The problem I battled for hours in¬ 
volved parameter calls. Standard Ada lets 
you call any function or procedure that 
assumes default parameter values by invok¬ 
ing its name. Janus—like an earlier version 
of Ada—requires that you add an empty set 
of parentheses so the use of default param¬ 
eters is explicitly stated. 

Because Janus doesn't use standard Ada 
strings, it does not have a simple way to 
read in a string with the valid Ada proce¬ 
dure: 

get(word); 

or 

get_line(word); 

Instead, Janus excludes strings from the get 
procedure. You must use the get_line func¬ 

tion instead of the get procedure. This 

(continued) 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 295 








REVIEW: JAN US/ADA 


AT A GLANCE 


Name 

Janus/Ada Compiler 

Type 

Ada programming language 
subset compiler 

Manufacturer 

RR Software Inc. 

2718 Dryden Dr. 

POB 1512 
Madison, Wl 53701 
(608) 244-6436 

Price 

$300 for CP/M-80 (not reviewed) 

$500 for MS-DOS 

$700 for MS-DOS with tools disk 

Format 

Three 5V4-inch double-sided floppy 
disks (compiler, linker, and tools) 

Documentation 

237-page loose-leaf manual in 
three-ring binder 

Audience 

Applications software developers, 
Ada programmers, 
aspiring Ada programmers 


makes any program that uses I/O 
(input/output) nonstandard Ada. To 

read a string, you must call the get_ 

line function: 

word : = get_line(); 

Note the required parentheses. 

To make finished code look more 
like standard Ada, I created simple 
procedures to hide these nonstan¬ 
dard calls; if you compile such a pro¬ 
gram with a more complete Ada com¬ 
piler, you need to change only these 
procedures. 

lanus's nonstandard array handling 
also creates problems. You can create 
patches to cover some missing fea¬ 
tures. but some of Ada's elegance is 
lost. For example, the valid Ada array 
assignment: 

y(1..10) := x(1..10); 

will copy each element of x(i) into the 
corresponding y(i) element. This won't 


work in (anus because Janus doesn’t 
implement array or string "slicing." 
That is, it cannot access groups of ar¬ 
ray elements. If x and y are non-string 
arrays, the following replaces the 
above code: 

for i in 1..10 loop 
y(i) := x(i); 
end loop; — for i 

If x and y are strings, the job is 
tougher. An appendix to the manual 
explains several nonstandard sub¬ 
string functions and procedures. To 
do exactly the same as the original. 
I'd have to use: 

y := extract(y l 11,length(y)); 
i nsert(y,extract(x ,1,10) ,1); 

where the first line removes the first 
10 characters of y and the second in¬ 
serts the first 10 characters of x into 
the beginning of y. Somehow this 
lacks the simple elegance of the valid 
Ada array assignment. 

Separate Compilation 

Any Ada or Janus code can easily be 
bundled off in a separate segment 
and separately compiled. By doing 
this, several programmers can devel¬ 
op code independently, each know¬ 
ing only the names and parameters of 
the subprograms the others are de¬ 
veloping. Any changes made to the 
subprograms later will require only 
that dependent segments be recom¬ 
piled and the program relinked with 
a minimum of debugging. 

The Compiler 

The compiler makes four separate 
passes; I've only experienced errors 
on the first three. Much information 
is echoed to the screen, most of it 
useless to the typical user; during 
each pass of the source or inter¬ 
mediate code, screen symbols show 
that the compiler is working. 

When the compiler finds an error, 
it displays the guilty line and the line 
preceding it along with the line 
number; it points out the error and 
displays a fairly helpful error message. 

Run-time errors are more confusing. 
When an error occurs during run time, 
the system merely displays the error 


message and line number. Since my 
text editor isn't line-oriented, I had to 
count lines to find the error—not an 
easy task when the error is in line 67 5. 

Each compilation takes from two to 
five minutes, depending on the length 
of the file and on whether the file be¬ 
ing compiled is merely a specification 
or includes executable code. Long 
files can be broken into segments for 
separate compilation; this is helpful 
when a single procedure must be re¬ 
compiled many times during debug¬ 
ging. After all segments are compiled, 
you can link the main program and 
generate a .COM file. Like most com¬ 
pilers. Janus/Ada generates .COM files 
that are longer than the source code 
because library subprograms are 
linked into the file as well. 

Benchmark Performance 

Janus/Ada is not an optimized com¬ 
piler, nor does it optimize the code 
it generates. This is forgivable given 
its price and the speed with which it 
was brought to market. Still, it needs 
substantial performance improve¬ 
ments before I would use it for com¬ 
mercial software development. 

The Sieve program in Ada compiled 
in 184.7 seconds, linked in 15.1 
seconds, and ran in 29.4 seconds. 
Most, if not all, other language com¬ 
pilers on the IBM PC generate faster 
code more quickly. (RR Software in¬ 
cludes with the compiler a version of 
the Sieve program translated from 
Pascal to Ada that is different from the 
BYTE Ada Sieve benchmark.) 

The floating-point benchmark (list¬ 
ing 1) compiled in 184 seconds, linked 
in 15.8 seconds, and ran in 2.6 sec¬ 
onds. In this case, execution time was 
faster than the speed of several C 
compilers, although compilation 
speed was slow by comparison. Note 
that an 8087 coprocessor was used 
and that Janus can use floating-point 
numbers on the IBM PC only if it is 
equipped with this math coprocessor; 
no provision is made for floating-point 
arithmetic in software. 

A benchmark that computes 
Fibonacci numbers wouldn't run when 
translated because Janus/Ada doesn't 
support 16-bit unsigned integers; they 


296 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 






REVIEW: IAN US/ADA 


cause a run-time error when the 
highest value is computed. When re¬ 
written to use lanus's long_integer 

type, a stack/heap overflow occurs 
because Janus uses only 64 K bytes of 
memory for data. (It uses another 64K 
bytes for code.) The Quicksort and 
IOfile programs used in benchmark¬ 
ing compilers also use long integers 
but were not benchmarked. 

lanus's long_integer type was not 

easy to figure out, even after several 
calls to RR Software. The manual 

notes that long_integer is a standard 

type, but in fact you must use a 
separate library package called 
LONGOPS. Copies of the library pack¬ 
ages are included on disk, a fact I 
discovered only after calling the com¬ 
pany several times. 

Janus long_integers can't be ma¬ 

nipulated like integers, since they're 
essentially user-defined types: addi¬ 
tion or type conversion has to be 
done using one of the functions in 
LONGOPS. As a result, a program 

using long_integers in Janus looks 

radically different from one using in¬ 
tegers in a more standard compiler. 
Listing 2 shows the Fibonacci pro¬ 
gram in standard Ada; an overflow 
error is generated because the 24th 
Fibonacci number is a 16-bit unsigned 
number and Janus supports only 
15-bit unsigned or 16-bit signed inte¬ 
gers. Listing 3 shows the program con¬ 
verted to use the type long_integer 

in Janus; a heap overflow occurs 
because of the deep recursion and 
large data space required. 

Documentation 

The Janus/Ada manual follows the for¬ 
mat of Ada's military standard refer¬ 
ence manual: each section mimics the 
reference manual and discusses any 
differences between Janus and Ada. 
The manual warns that it is not a com¬ 
plete guide and suggests that you 
have a copy of the Ada reference 
manual and an Ada textbook. 

The Janus manual refers to the Ada 
reference manual of 1980, which is no 
longer accurate; changes were made 
during the ANSI (American National 
Standards Institute) review process, 

( continued) 


Listing 1: The floating-point benchmark program translated from the C version. 

package body floatbch is 
constl : constant float := 3.141597E0; 
const2 : constant float := 1.7839032E4; 
count : constant integer := 1000; 
a, b, c : float; 
i: integer; 

begin — float main program body 
a : = constl; 
b : = const2; 
for i in 1..count loop 
c : = a * b; 
c : = c / a; 
c : = a * b; 
c : = c / a; 
c : = a * b; 
c : = c / a; 
c : = a * b; 
c : = c / a; 
c : = a * b; 
c : = c / a; 
c : = a * b; 
c : = c / a; 
c : = a * b; 
c : = c / a; 
end loop; — for i 
put (“Done”); new_line; 

end floatbch; 


Listing 2: The Fibonacci benchmark program in the standard Ada language 
translated from the C version as printed in BYTE, J une 1984, page 307. 

package body fibo is 

ntimes : constant integer : = 10; — # of times to compute fibonacci value 
number : constant integer : = 24; — biggest we can compute in 16 bits 
value : integer; 

i : integer; 


function fib(x: in integer) return integer is 
begin 

if x > 2 then 

return (fib(x - 1) + fib(x - 2)); 
else 

return 1; 
end if; 

end; — function fib 


begin — fibo 
put(ntimes); 
put(“ iterations: “); 
new_line; 

for i in 1..ntimes loop 
value : = fib(number); 
end loop; — for i 
put(“fibonacci(”); 
put(number); 
put(") = ”); 
put(value); 

new_line; 

end; — fibo 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 297 









REVIEW: JAN US/ADA 


Listing 3: The Fibonacci benchmark program translated from C (BYTE. J une 
1984, page 307) into ]anuslAda using the necessary long_integer type. 

with longops; 
package body fibo is 
use longops; 

ntimes . constant integer : = 10; — # of times to compute fibonacci value 

number: constant long_integer : = lint(24); — biggest we can compute 

in 16 bits 

one : constant long_integer := lint(1); 

two : constant long_integer : = lint(2); 

value : long_integer; 

i : long_integer; 


function fib(x: in long_integer) return long_integer is 

begin 

if Lgt(x,two) then 

return Ladd(fib(Lsub(x,one)),fib(Lsub(x,two))); 
else 

return one; 
end if; 

end; — function fib 


begin — fibo 
put(ntimes); 
put(“ iterations: ”); 
new_line; 

for i in 1..ntimes loop 
value : = fib(number); 
end loop; — for i 
put ("fibonacciO; 

put (I_to_lnt(number)); 

put O = "); 

put (1_to_Int(value)); 

new_line; 

end; — fibo 


Table 1: A partial list of unimplemented or nonstandard features of Janus!Ada. 

Item 

Purpose/Difference 

Slices 

Allows references to sections of arrays or strings 

Example: a(1..5) 

Strings 

Not Ada standard (dynamic length) 

Named/default 

Allows default input parameters or 

parameters 

named parameters in subprogram call 

Examples: attackfenemy = > sam, weapon = > knife); 
attack(enemy = > fred); 
procedure attack (enemy: IN person : = dave; 

weapon: IN tools = gun); 

Tasks 

Ada’s multitasking facilities 

Exceptions 

Exception/error-handling facilities 

Generics 

Subprograms can be easily redefined for new data types 

Example: 

procedure EXCHANGE (uy: in out ELEM ) is 
t: ELEM; 
begin 

t : = u; u : = v; v : = t; 
end EXCHANGE; 

procedure swap is new EXCHANGE (character); 
procedure swap is new EXCHANGE(ELEM = > integer), 


You need to rewrite 
Janus programs to run 
on an Ada compiler. 


and the true Ada is now reflected in 
the reference manual of lanuary 1983. 
(Like its manual. Janus conforms to 
the earlier version of Ada.) 

A fairly complete index is included 
in the manual, but some items are 
omitted. When I tried to learn about 
string-handling routines, for example. 

1 found that section 15—which in¬ 
cludes the list of string functions—was 
not in the index under 'string.' 

As noted above, the manual says 

that long_integer is a standard type. 

although it isn't. RR Software admits 
that the manual (version 3.2) is behind 
the compiler. 

Summary 

The Ada Joint Program Office (AJPO) 
insists that any partial implementation 
of Ada be so marked and all missing 
features be clearly identified. RR Soft¬ 
ware includes a list of implemented 
and unimplemented features in its 
brochure and its documentation. 
Some of the most significant missing 
features are listed in table 1. 

While missing Ada features make 
experience with Janus less helpful to 
programmers, its nonstandard imple¬ 
mentations of other features can be 
downright confusing. String and file 
handling are nonstandard, which 
means that you will need to rewrite 
almost all Janus programs in order to 
run them on a valid Ada compiler. 

RR Software expected the next ver¬ 
sion of Janus/Ada to be available in 
the fall of 1984 and said that many ex¬ 
tensions and changes would be made 
to the compiler. The new version 
might be available by the time you 
read this article. 

While Janus is not a true implemen¬ 
tation and lacks many of Ada's fea¬ 
tures. it is a useful, inexpensive tool 
for those wishing to learn the lan¬ 
guage before true Ada compilers are 
available for microcomputers. ■ 


298 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 













JUKI 6300: 

THE SPEED OF A BEE 


ONE HONEY OF A PRICE- 



s 995! 




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Inquiry 166 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 299 
















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Inquiry 181 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 301 
















SYSTEM REVIEW 


T fie Epson Geneva PX-8 


Epson 
strikes back 

by Rich Malloy 


T he Epson Geneva PX-8 (see photo 
1) has a low-power CMOS (comple¬ 
mentary metal-oxide semiconduc¬ 
tor) version of the Z80 processor. 64 K bytes 
of CMOS memory 32K bytes of permanent 
ROM (read-only memory), an 8-line by 
80-character LCD (liquid-crystal display), a 
rechargeable battery, a full-size keyboard, 
and a microcassette drive. In addition, the 
PX-8 comes with a full complement of soft¬ 
ware: the CP/M operating system (version 
2.2), WordStar, CalcStar. BASIC, a schedul¬ 
ing program, and a communications pro¬ 
gram. This package ($995), in combination 
with a healthy supply of expansion hard¬ 
ware, makes the PX-8 a good second com¬ 
puter, especially for people with CP/M 
systems. 


Hardware 

At five pounds and with physical dimen¬ 
sions just slightly larger than a heavily 
packed three-ring binder, the PX-8 is quite 
at home in a briefcase. With its LCD folded 
tightly and a plastic cover over its keyboard, 
it is fairly well protected for the ordeals of 
the road. There is even a large plastic han¬ 
dle that slides out near the keyboard. When 
you want to use it, the cover quickly slides 
off and the display unfolds to the desired 
angle, revealing a speaker and microcas¬ 
sette drive. 

On the rear panel of the PX-8 are several 
ports: an RS-232C DIN (Deutsche Institut fur 
Normung. the German standards organiza¬ 
tion) connector, a serial DIN connector (for 
an optional floppy-disk drive), a connector 
for a bar-code reader, an external speaker 
connector, and a 50-pin expansion connec¬ 
tor covered by a plastic strip. The power 
switch is conveniently placed on the right 
side of the unit. 


Rich Malloy is a senior technical 
editor for BYTE. He can be 
contacted at BYTE. 43 rd Floor. 
1221 Avenue of the Americas. 
New York. NY 10020. 


Display 

The size of the Geneva’s LCD is acceptable, 
but it is a little hard to read (see photo 2). 
You can adjust the display to whatever 
angle gives you the least glare and the most 


contrast, and you can adjust the screen con¬ 
trast further by sliding a switch that's below 
the screen. 

The PX-8 can display 8 lines of 80 char¬ 
acters each. (The characters are composed 
on a 5- by 7-pixel matrix inside a 6- by 
8-pixel matrix.) However, lowercase letters 
such as g and y do not have descenders, 
and you can't display in reverse video (i.e., 
light character on dark background). The 
characters are much smaller and thinner 
than those on the TRS-80 Model 100, and 
the screen is slower, but the Epson does 
display twice as many characters. 

The screen displays all 96 standard ASCII 
(American Standard Code for Information 
Interchange) characters plus 32 common 
graphics symbols (codes 128-159 decimal), 
which are compatible with some Epson 
printers but not with the IBM-compatible 
ones. Character sets are available for France, 
Germany, U.K., Denmark. Sweden, Italy. 
Spain, and Norway. 

The PX-8's keyboard is similar to but bet¬ 
ter than the HX-20’s (see photo 3). It has 
four cursor keys above the Return key and 
a Help key plus five function keys in the 
upper left. And there are indicators for 
caps-lock and num-lock features. 

Memory 

The PX-8 uses a low-power CMOS version 
of the Z80 microprocessor with a clock rate 
of 2.45 MHz. In tests with BASIC and Calc- 
Star, it appeared slower than most other of¬ 
fice computers at calculating. The PX-8 also 
uses two slave processors. A 6303 controls 
access to the display, the external disk drive, 
and the application ROM chips, among 
other things. A 7508 works with the system 
clock and keyboard and controls the 
Geneva's alarm features. 

The Geneva comes with 64K bytes of 
CMOS memory that is always on; even if the 
main battery fails, a small backup battery 
keeps the memory chips powered on for a 
week or so until you can recharge it. The 
only event that should clear memory is if 


302 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 







you press a special hidden reset button on 
the bottom of the machine and do a cold 
reboot. You can set part of the memory up 
as a RAM disk with a size of 2K to 24K 
bytes. 

The operating system is held in 32K bytes 
of ROM. When you turn on the system, it 
replaces (bank-switches) the lower 32K 
bytes of RAM (random-access read/write 
memory) with this ROM. When you run an 
application, the system bank-switches the 
RAM back into this location. The net result 
is a virtual 96K-byte machine. 

The machine has two sockets for ROM 
chips hidden under a panel on the bottom 
of the Computer. The software bundled with 
the PX-8 comes on four 32K-byte ROM 
chips: one each for CP/M system utilities. 
WordStar. BASIC, and a combination of 
CalcStar and a scheduling program. Only 
two of these chips can be resident in the 
machine at one time. 

Epson has done a good job of imple¬ 
menting a microcassette drive in the 
Geneva. Even though it looks and acts like 
a tape drive, the operating system sees it 
as a disk drive, albeit a slow one. It even 
has its own directory and drive specification 
(H:). However, it has some quirks. Tb save 
time, the system doesn't write the directory 
onto the cassette until you tell it that you 
are going to remove the tape. If you forget 
to tell the system, some data stored on the 
cassette will be lost. 

A 60-minute cassette (30 minutes per 
side) stores up to 12 files and up to 60K 
bytes per side. 

You can also use the microcassette drive 
much like a regular audio-tape drive. Under 
certain conditions, the programmable func¬ 
tion keys can simulate the control keys on 
a cassette tape player. You can even use it 
to listen to your audio cassettes, but the 
volume is very low. 

The PX-8 is powered by an internal nicad 
(nickel-cadmium) battery, which can supply 
full power for about 15 hours. (Use of the 
microcassette drive or serial port shortens 


this time.) You can recharge the battery with 
a small transformer that plugs into any 
power outlet. A full recharge takes about 
8 hours, longer if you use the machine dur¬ 
ing the process. 

Interfaces 

The Geneva has a number of interfaces for 
external peripherals. The most useful is 
probably the RS-232C serial port configured 
as a round eight-pin DIN jack. It has pins 
for all the most commonly used signals— 
GND. TD. RD. RTS. CTS. DSR. DTR, DCD. and 
FG (frame ground)—and a maximum speed 
of 19.200 bps (bits per second). You can use 
two protocols: SI/SO (shift in/shift out), 
which can transmit a full 256 characters 
over a 7-bit communications link, and 
XON/XOFF. 

To use the RS-232C port you need to pur¬ 
chase a DIN/DB-25 converter cable (approx¬ 
imately $2 5). Although we didn't test a large 
number of serial devices, we found the 
Geneva worked well with an Epson acoustic 
modem and with an IBM Personal Com¬ 
puter (PC) using a null modem adapter. 

( continued ) 



Photo 1: The Epson Geneva PX-8 computer, shown with optional battery- 
powered V/i-inch floppy-disk drive. Note the internal microcassette drive located 
between the keyboard and the display. 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 303 






REVIEW: EPSON GENEVA PX-8 


The PX-8 has another similar con¬ 
nector labeled serial, which you can 
use to connect an external disk drive 
(at 38.400 bps) or a serial printer (at 
4800 bps). It also has three other 
ports: an external speaker jack (in ad¬ 
dition to the internal speaker), an 
analog input jack (which connects to 
an internal analog-to-digital (A/D) con¬ 
verter. 0-2 volts. 6 bits of resolution), 
and a connector for a bar-code 
reader. 


One interface noticeably absent is 
a parallel printer interface. Another 
desirable connection would be for a 
full-size 80- by 24-character display. 

The PF-10 portable 3‘/ 2 -inch disk 
drive (see photo 1) is available for 
$599. Powered by an internal battery, 
it is rechargeable by the same trans¬ 
former that recharges the Geneva. 
The disk drive can store about 320K 
bytes on a 3‘/ 2 -inch microfloppy disk 
and connects to the PX-8 with a short 


cable through the serial port. You can 
connect two disk drives in daisy-chain 
fashion. The data-transmission rate is 
38,400 bps, slower than the parallel 
connections most disk drives use. 
When you purchase the disk drive, 
you also get the following familiar 
CP/M utilities: FORMAT. DISKCOPY. 
ED. DDT. ASM. LOAD, and DUMP. 

Expansion 

The Geneva has some other interest¬ 
ing accessories. All are wedge-shaped 
modules that attach to the bottom of 
the computer and connect through 
the 50-pin expansion bus. These 
modules add little to the size and 
weight of the unit and elevate the key¬ 
board to a comfortable typing angle. 

The first of these are memory-ex¬ 
pansion modules (see photo 4). which 
come in two flavors: 60K bytes ($329) 
and 120K bytes ($460). Since the Z80 
microprocessor can address only the 
basic 64 K bytes of memory, the sec¬ 
ond and third 60K-byte segments are 
set up as a RAM drive. 

A second add-on module is a direct- 
connect. 300-bps modem ($180). A 
third module combines that modem 
with 60K bytes of memory for $360. 
We did not test either of these 
modules. 

These expansion units all connect 
through the 50-pin expansion-bus 
connector on the back of the com¬ 
puter. This connector was not de¬ 
signed for easy access, but once you 
attach an accessory you probably 
won't have to touch it again. 

Software 

The Geneva comes equipped with 
128K bytes of software on ROM 
chips—four 32K-byte chips. The first 
one contains the BASIC interpreter; 
the second, some CP/M utilities; the 
third. Portable WordStar; and the 
fourth, a combination of Portable Calc 
(CalcStar) and Portable Scheduler. 
Only two of these chips can be pres¬ 
ent in the system at one time (see 
photo 5). 

The Geneva’s operating system has 
some interesting features. First, it all 
resides on yet another ROM chip, 

( continued ) 


Photo 2: The display of the Epson PX-8. Under certain lighting conditions this 
80-character by 8-line display can be difficult to read. 


Photo 3: The keyboard of the Epson PX-8. 1 n this picture the display is folded down 
over the microcassette drive. Note the second Control key to the right of the space bar 
and the caps-lock. num-lock. and insert-mode indicators above the zero key. 




304 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


































AT A GLANCE 


EPSON 


Name 

Geneva PX-8 

Manufacturer 

Epson America 
2780 Lomita Blvd. 

Torrance, CA 90505 
(213) 539-9140 

Size 

11.7 by 8.5 by 1.9 inches 
(29.7 by 21.6 by 4.8 cm), 

5.1 pounds (2.3 kg) 

Components 

Display: 80-character by 
8-line LCD, 480- by 64-pixel 
graphics 

Keyboard: 72 keys, 4 cursor 
keys, 5 programmable 
function keys 

Processor: Z80-compatible, 
low-power CMOS version, 
2.45-MHz clock speed 
Memory: 64K RAM; 6K RAM 
for display; 32K ROM 
(system); 64K ROM 
(applications) 

Power: Nicad battery rated 
at 15 hours, small 
transformer/recharger 
Options: 320K, 3V2-inch disk 
drive ($599); 60K memory 
expansion ($329); 120K 
memory expansion ($460); 
300-bps, direct-connect 
modem ($180); combination 
60K memory plus modem 
($360) 

Software 

CP/M 2.2, BASIC (Microsoft), 
Portable WordStar, Portable 
Calc, Portable Scheduler, 
TERM (communications) 

Documentation 

Five manuals 

Price 

$995 



MEMORY SIZE ( K BYTES) 

0 200 400 600 800 1000 



0 2 4 6 8 10 



DISK STORAGE (K BYTES) 


0 400 800 1200 1600 2000 



0 2 4 6 8 10 



!BM PC Y//A APPLE HE 


The Memory Size graph shows the standard 
and optional memory available for the com¬ 
puters under comparison. The graph of Disk 
Storage capacity shows the highest capacity 
of one and two floppy-disk drives for each 
system. The Bundled Software Packages graph 
shows the number of software packages in¬ 
cluded with each system. The Price graph 


shows the list price of a system with two high- 
capacity floppy-disk drives; a monochrome 
monitor; graphics and color-display capability; 
a printer port and a serial port; 256K bytes of 
memory (64K for 8-bit systems); and the stan¬ 
dard operating system and standard BASIC in¬ 
terpreter for each system. Note that the price 
of the Epson does not include a disk drive. 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 305 




























































































DISK ACCESS IN BASIC (SEC) 




SYSTEM UTILITIES (SEC) 




U| EPSON RAM DISK | [ EPSON PX-8 [ j IBM PC Y///X APPLE IIE 


The graphs for Disk Access in BASIC show how long it takes to write 
a 64K-byte sequential text file to a blank floppy disk and how long 
it takes to read this file. (For the program listings see June 1984 BYTE, 
page 327, and October 1984, page 33.) The Sieve column shows 
how long it takes to run one iteration of the Sieve of Eratosthenes 
prime-number benchmark. Note that the Epson could not run the 
Sieve test because of insufficient available memory. The Calculations 
column shows how long it takes to do 10,000 multiplication and divi¬ 
sion operations using single-precision numbers. The System Utilities 


graph shows how long it takes to format and copy a disk (adjusted 
time for 40K bytes of disk data). The file-copy test involved copying 
a file from one part of a floppy disk to another. The Spreadsheet 
graph shows how long the computers take to load and recalculate 
a 25- by 25-cell spreadsheet where each cell equals 1.001 times 
the cell to its left. The spreadsheet programs used were Portable 
Calc for the Epson and Microsoft Multiplan for the others. The tests 
for the Apple lie were done with the ProDOS operating system. The 
lie Multiplan test was done with DOS 3.3, the IBM with PC-DOS 2.0. 


306 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 




































































































































































































































REVIEW: EPSON GENEVA PX-8 


which is permanently installed in the 
system. Second, when you turn the 
machine on for the first time, the sys¬ 
tem asks you how much memory you 
want in your RAM disk—from 2K to 
24K bytes. Thereafter when you turn 
on the system, you see a menu of all 
the files on a particular drive. (By drive 
I refer to any device: a disk, a RAM 
drive, a microcassette tape. The oper¬ 
ating system treats them all alike.) You 
then move the cursor to the program 
or document you want and press the 
Enter key. This loads the selected pro¬ 
gram into RAM and executes it. 

If you press Control-Help, you see 
the System Display, which includes in¬ 
formation on various operat¬ 
ing-system parameters. The display 
contains the date and time, the size 
of the RAM disk, whether or not a 
password is in effect, which drives are 
listed on the menu, and which data 
files are linked to which programs. 

The password feature on this 
machine is pretty secure. If you set a 
password, the machine won’t do 
anything until you give it the correct 
one. The only way around it is to do 
a cold reboot and lose all your data. 

You can turn the menu on or off and 
choose which drives are to be listed 
on the menu and in which order. 

The System Display also lets you 
control the cassette drive manually. 
The function keys become like the 
controls on a tape recorder. 

In practice, the menu is quite useful, 
but sometimes it gets in the way. For 
example, it is hard to enter a com¬ 
mand such as STAT A: *. *—how many 
files are on the A drive and how large 
are they. Tb do this you must leave the 
menu by hitting Escape. Fortunately, 
you can turn the menu on or off. 

The most significant piece of soft¬ 
ware in the Geneva is the ROM-based 
version of WordStar. Despite its small 
size, this version seems to contain 
most of the features of the larger ver¬ 
sion. The only features lacking are cer¬ 
tain printing capabilities. 

The spreadsheet supplied with the 
PX-8 is Portable Calc, a ROM-based 
version of CalcStar. Portable Calc per¬ 
formed our standard recalculation 

( continued ) 


Tkble 1: Word-processing benchmarks for Portable WordStar on the Epson 
Geneva PX-8 ( times in seconds). I n many tests the Epson with a RAM disk 
performs as fast or faster than a floppy-disk-based IBM PC. There are two 
glaring exceptions, however: the scroll test and any test involving the Epson's 
floppy disk. All tests were done using a standard BYTE 4000-word test file 
(2IK bytes). The RAM disk used was a 128K -byte external memory-expansion 
module. The data for the IBM PC was obtained using an IBM PC with 
WordStar version 3.3, DOS 2.0, two floppy-disk drives, and a monochrome 
monitor and adapter. 



Geneva PX-8 

IBM PC 


RAM disk 

Floppy disk 


Load text file 

8.3 

17.3 

9.9 

Save text file 

15.6 

80.0 

24.2 

Search 

12.5 

37.6 

10.5 

Scroll 

287.0 

n.a. 

41.2 



Photo 4: The optional memory-expansion module for the Epson PX-8, shown ready to 
attach to the bottom of the computer. 



Photo 5: The sockets for the Epson's ROM chips are hidden in a special compartment 
on the bottom of the machine. A soft metallic sheet minimizes radio-frequency 
interference in the surrounding environment. 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 307 
















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REVIEW: EPSON GENEVA PX-8 


test as fast as Multiplan did on the 
Apple He. and it was much faster than 
the CalcStar version that comes with 
the 16-bit Sanyo MBC 550. 

Portable Scheduler runs rings 
around the SCHED program on the 
Radio Shack Model 100 and ap¬ 
proaches the usefulness of the 
scheduler features on the HP 75 por¬ 
table. You can set an alarm, and you 
can have the computer remind you of 
a series of appointments. 

BASIC and CP/M 

The BASIC interpreter on the Geneva 
takes up about 32K bytes of memory, 
compared to about 16K bytes used by 
the Model lOO's BASIC. The Geneva 
version lets you do quite a few more 
things; for example, you can access 
the alarm features directly from 
BASIC. It also includes AUTO (auto¬ 
matic line numbering) and WHILE 
. . . WEND. Both BASICS were 
created by Microsoft, and they are 
fairly compatible. 

In terms of performance, the 
Geneva's BASIC does not compare 
well with desktop-machine versions. 
The results of our single-precision 
calculation test were significantly 
slower on the Epson than on the IBM 
PC and the Apple Me. Also, we could 
not get our Sieve of Eratosthenes test 
to run. Of course, anything that in¬ 
volved disk accesses was significant¬ 
ly slower. 

Finally, we come to the utility pro¬ 
grams of CP/M version 2.2, such as 
copy files (PIP), check disk or RAM- 
drive status (STAT), and perform 
several different programs in se¬ 
quence (SUBMIT). To these programs 
Epson has added a configuration utili¬ 
ty and two communications pro¬ 
grams. 

TERM is a general-purpose program 
for communicating with other com¬ 
puters via phone or direct connection. 
It doesn't support automatic dialing 
or logging on, but it is quite easy to 
use. FI LINK is for file transfer to and 
from an Epson QX-10. We didn't test 
this program. 

The practicality of these application 
programs is somewhat limited by the 
fact that only two ROM chips can be 


present in the PX-8 at one time. If, 
however, you have one of the optional 
memory-expansion modules, you can 
load some of the more useful utilities 
into the RAM drive, then remove the 
CP/M utility chip and use that socket 
for another ROM chip. 

One advantage of owning a CP/M 
system is that you potentially have a 
wide selection of available software. 
The Geneva display and keyboard 
emulate a Soroc IQ-120 terminal, and, 
theoretically the Epson can run any 
CP/M software that is compatible with 
the Soroc. In actuality, the Geneva 
doesn't support features such as high- 
intensity or inverse-video characters, 
and although it has a virtual screen 
of 24 lines, its physical screen has only 
8. According to Bob Diaz of Epson, 
most of the simple CP/M utility pro¬ 
grams such as DU and CATALOG run 
on the Geneva. More complex CP/M 
programs, such as PeacHlfext, will run 
but with some minor problems. And 
CP/M programs customized for a par¬ 
ticular terminal or computer probably 
won't run at all. 

Documentation 

The documentation for the Geneva 
and its software is, on the whole, 
good. The manuals are typeset, well 
written, accurate, and practically 
devoid of typographical errors. I was 
particularly impressed with the easy- 
to-read Portable WordStar manual, 
which included a reference card and 
stick-on labels for certain keys. 

The main manual lists the entry ad¬ 
dresses and functions of all the BIOS 
(basic input/output system) and BDOS 
(basic disk operating system) routines 
of the Geneva's version of CP/M. 

Summary 

After the disappointment of the 
Epson HX-20, the Geneva PX-8 repre¬ 
sents a giant improvement. It is, at this 
time, the most powerful 8-bit portable 
available. And its price of $995 makes 
it fairly affordable. With the CP/M 2.2 
operating system, the Geneva is an 
ideal second computer for CP/M sys¬ 
tem owners. It is also a good second 
computer for people who use Word¬ 
Star on a desktop system. ■ 


308 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 













































































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ISPS Power Supply "Internal" (140 watts) $295 

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Inquiry 87 





















SOFTWARE REVIEW 



A great buy 
is pitted 
against a 
professional 
system 

by Kevin Bowyer 


Kevin Bowyer is on the faculty of 
Computer Science and Engineering 
at the University of South Florida 
in Tampa. He was previously on the 
faculty of the Swiss Federal Institute 
of Technology in Zurich. He received 
his Pfi.D. in Computer Science from 
Duke University. Among several 
hooks he has written are An 
Introduction to Modula-2 
(R eston Publishing, available early 
1985. co-authored with Warren 
I ones of the University of Alabama 
at Birmingham ) and Pascal for 
the IBM PC (Robert J. Brady Co.). 


Two Modula-2 Compilers 
for the IBM PC 


T wo Modula-2 compilers are avail¬ 
able for the IBM PC and run under 
PC-DOS. Both are adaptations of 
the original Modula-2 compiler developed 
at the ETH (Federal Institute of Technology, 
Zurich, Switzerland) to run on the Lilith per¬ 
sonal workstation. One is the Modula Re¬ 
search Institute (MRI) Modula-2 compiler, 
version 1.35, available for $40 from the 
Modula Research Institute in Provo, Utah. 
The other is the Logitech Modula-2/86 com¬ 
piler, version 1.0, available for $495 from 
Logitech Inc. in Redwood City, California. 
The one other Modula-2 compiler for the 
IBM PC is marketed by Volition Systems of 
Del Mar, California. However, this compiler 
runs under the UCSD p-System and so is 
not directly comparable to the two I discuss 
here. {Editor's note: A PC-DOS version of this com¬ 
piler has recently become available .| 

The MRI and Logitech compilers have 
many similarities traceable to their common 
ancestor. The essential difference between 
them is that the MRI compiler generates M- 
code, the machine language developed at 
ETH for the Lilith workstations, whereas the 
Logitech compiler generates 8088 machine 
language. The noticeable differences in 
compilation and program execution speed 
are a result of this difference 

Required Resources 

The Logitech compiler requires an IBM PC 
equipped with an 8087 numeric copro¬ 
cessor chip, two double-sided disk drives, 
and at least 170K bytes of RAM (random- 
access read/write memory) in addition to 
whatever space the operating system uses. 
It runs under PC-DOS 1.1 or 2.0. A practical 
minimum for using the Logitech Modula-2 
compiler with PC-DOS 2.0 is 2 56K bytes of 
memory. The MRI compiler might function 
on a system of two single-sided disk drives 
and 128K bytes of RAM, but a practical 
minimum is two double-sided drives and 
196K bytes of RAM. 

I did all the testing for this comparison 
on a PC XT with 2 56K bytes of RAM. Judg¬ 


ing by the number of disk accesses made 
by either system, enough extra internal 
memory to create an "electronic disk" 
would greatly increase speed. 

Ease of Use 

Both the MRI and Logitech systems require 
some care in setting up the original con¬ 
figuration. You have to decide where to put 
the many files that make up either system, 
and your CONFIG.SYS file at the root level 
of the file system must have certain options. 
All this is well described in the documen¬ 
tation and should present no problem. 

Neither the MRI nor the Logitech com¬ 
piler runs directly from PC-DOS. Nor do 
they produce standard EXE or COM format 
files, so the programs created with the com¬ 
pilers cannot be executed directly from PC- 
DOS. The MRI system runs its own "shell," 
or command interpreter, on top of PC-DOS. 
The compiler and any programs that you 
write are run from this shell. The Logitech 
system is similar. While it doesn't have a 
shell that stays resident on top of PC-DOS, 
it does have a "run-time system" that you 
have to invoke for running the compiler or 
programs created with the compiler. 

Since neither the Logitech nor MRI system 
includes a text editor, you must use your 
own (or EDLIN) to prepare a standard PC- 
DOS text file that contains the program's 
source code. Assume that you have already 
prepared a source program in the file SAM¬ 
PLE.MOD. You can start up the MRI shell 
with the command interp. The MRI shell 
then displays the copyright notice and an 
asterisk prompt. You can now run the com¬ 
piler by entering the command modula. You 
can run the resulting compiled program by 
entering its name. When you want to leave 
the MRI shell, you type Control-C. 

In the case of the Logitech system, you 
invoke the compiler from PC-DOS with the 
command m2 comp. The m2 is the name 
of the Logitech run-time system, so any 
Logitech program running under PC-DOS 

( continued ) 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 311 









REVIEW: COMPILERS 


must be prefaced with m2 at run time. 

Both systems will then prompt you 
for the source file and give almost 
exactly the same messages as the 
compiler progresses: 

source file sample.mod 
pi 

InOut: C:lnOut.SYM 
P2 
P3 
P4 

end compilation 

The sameness of the messages 
reflects the origin of both compilers— 
the Modula-2 compiler developed at 
ETH. The four-pass structure of the 
compilers is a carryover from the 
original Lilith compiler, which was 
ported from a PDP-11 Modula-2 com¬ 
piler that had to run in a small address 
space. 

Unlike the MR1 system, the output 


of the Logitech compiler must under¬ 
go a separate link step before it can 
be executed. The linker collects all the 
separately compiled parts of the pro¬ 
gram and groups them into a single 
load file. The m2 command executes 
this load file. 

The MR1 interpreter takes rather 
long to load into memory: about 10 
seconds on a hard-disk system, more 
with a floppy-disk system. This can 
be annoying if you have to leave and 
reenter the interpreter to use an 
editor for correcting errors in your 
program. For this reason, the MRI 
shell incorporates an "escape to 
DOS'' feature. You can enter an ex¬ 
clamation point to start up a copy of 
the PC-DOS command interpreter 
(COMMAND.COM) on top of the MRI 
shell. Then you can edit your program 
and return to the MRI system with the 
exit command. 


Listing 1: "Hello. World!" program. 


MODULE sample; 

FROM InOut IMPORT WriteString; 
BEGIN 

WriteStringCHello, World!”); 
END sample. 


Listing 2: Nothing to the nearest 
integer program. 

MODULE sample; 

VAR i, j, sum: INTEGER; 

BEGIN 
sum : = 0; 

FOR i := 1 TO 1000 DO 
FOR j := 100 TO 1 BY -1 DO 
sum := sum + (i-j) + (j-i); 
END; 

END; 

END sample. 


Listing 3: Extended-precision nothing program. 
MODULE sample; 

VAR x. y: ARRAYfl . 100] OF REAL; 

sum: REAL; 

VAR i, j: INTEGER; 

BEGIN 

FOR i :« 1 TO 100 DO (* initialize *) 
x[i] := FLOAT(i); y[i] := FLOAT(i); END; 

sum : = 0.0; 

FOR i := 1 TO 100 DO 
FOR j := i TO 100 DO 
sum := sum + x[j]*y[j] - y[j]*x[j]; 
sum : = sum / FLOAT(i); 

END; 

END; 

END sample. 


The escape-to-DOS feature works 
quite well and is much faster than the 
alternative most of the time. However, 
if you change directories while in DOS 
and forget to change back before re¬ 
turning to the MRI shell, things get 
hopelessly confused and you have to 
reboot the system. If you want to use 
the escape-to-DOS feature and have 
the MRI software in a subdirectory of 
the file system, you need to place a 
copy of COMMAND.COM in the same 
directory as the MRI software. 

Speed 

After running lots of small test pro¬ 
grams, I am convinced that Logitech's 
compiler is substantially slower than 
the one from MRI. However, the Logi¬ 
tech compiler can produce programs 
that execute much faster than those 
produced with the MRI compiler. A 
program that does nothing but write 
"’Hello, World!'' to the display (listing 
1) compiles in a little less than 40 sec¬ 
onds with the MRI compiler and 
about 65 seconds under the Logitech 
system. This does not include time for 
the link step required by the Logitech 
system, which takes another minute or 
so. 

An equivalent IBM PC-DOS Pascal 
program could be compiled and 
linked in under 30 seconds—even 
though it involves entering three 
separate commands to PC-DOS 
(PAS1. PAS2. and LINK). Neither 
Modula-2 system could be called 
speedy as far as compile time is 
concerned. 

If program execution speed is what 
you are after. Logitech's compile time 
might be worth waiting for. The Logi¬ 
tech compiler can produce programs 
that are many times faster than those 
produced by the MRI system. Another 
trivial example program (listing 2). 
using nested loops and integer arith¬ 
metic. takes about 20 seconds for the 
MRI system to compile and some¬ 
thing over 60 seconds to execute. The 
Logitech system takes 5 5 seconds to 
compile the same program, again not 
counting the required link step. (The 
link step would be quick here because 
there are no IMPORTS from sepa¬ 
rately compiled modules.) However, 


312 BYTE- FEBRUARY 1985 









REVIEW: COMPILERS 


AT A GLANCE 


the Logitech program executes in 
about 8 seconds—which is less than 
one-sixth the time of the MR1 
program. 

Both systems compile this second 
example more quickly than the first 
one, even though the executable part 
is more complex. This is because the 
first example imports a procedure 
from a separate module. Nearly any 
useful Modula-2 program will import 
procedures from at least one module, 
if for no other reason than to do in¬ 
put/output (I/O). Importing objects 
from separate modules takes time 
because the compiler must read the 
definition of the module and check it 
against the IMPORT clause. 

For one more comparison on com¬ 
piler and execution speed, I ran the 
Sieve of Eratosthenes prime-number 
generator used as ^ benchmark in 
previous BYTE articles (see reference 
1). The Logitech compiler took about 
65 seconds to process the program, 
2 5 seconds to link, and about 17 
seconds to execute. The MRI compiler 
took about 5 5 seconds to process the 
program and nearly 3 minutes to ex¬ 
ecute it. (The definition of "execution 
time" here is the same as that used 
in the article referenced above: the 
time between seeing the messages 
from the two output statements in the 
benchmark program.) 

Real Numbers 

The MRI and Logitech compilers are 
similar in how they represent all the 
standard data types except real. The 
MRI system implements real values as 
32-bit quantities, and arithmetic oper¬ 
ations on these values are performed 
in software. The Logitech system uses 
64-bit real numbers and can generate 
code for the 8087 numeric copro¬ 
cessor. For a PC with the 8087 in¬ 
stalled. this can be a great advantage. 
Consider the program in listing 3. 

The MRI compiler took just under 
30 seconds to compile this program, 
and the resulting program took about 
2 5 seconds to execute. The Logitech 
compiler took just over 50 seconds to 
compile the program, but the result¬ 
ing program executed in about 3 sec- 

(continued) 


Name 

MRI Modula-2 Compiler 

Vendor 

Modula Research Institute 
950 North University Ave. 

Provo, UT 84604 
(801) 375-7402 

Computer 

IBM PC or compatible 

Price 

$40 plus $2.50 shipping and handling 

Audience 

Anyone who wants a good, inexpensive 
introduction to Modula-2 on the PC 


Name 

Logitech Modula-2/86 

Vendor 

Logitech Inc. 

805 Veterans Blvd. 

Redwood City, CA 94063 
(415) 365-9852 

Computer 

IBM PC or compatible 

Price 

$495 

Audience 

Anyone who wants to develop software 
using Modula-2 and the 8087 numeric 
coprocessor chip; the 8087 is required 
with Modula-2/86 



LIST PRICE ($) 



KEY 

I I MRI 
E3 LOGITECH 

1 = LISTING 1 PROGRAM 

2 = LISTING 2 PROGRAM 

3= SIEVE OF ERATOSTHENES 
* = NOT TIMED 


Note that the Logitech compiler requires an 
8087 coprocessor and the MRI compiler 
does not support the 8087, so execution 
times do not involve commensurable 
hardware. Compile times for the Logitech 


compiler include link times. The Logitech 
compiles to 8088 machine code, while the 
MRI compiles to M-code and operates as 
an M-code-to-8088 interpreter at run 
time. 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 313 































































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REVIEW: COMPILERS 


onds on a PC XT equipped with the 

8087 numeric coprocessor. 

Compiler Directives 

Compiler directives in Modula-2 are 
specified much the same as in Pascal. 
The directive letter and setting are 
given inside a comment. The Logitech 
compiler has three directives: 

(*$R + *) code generation for sub¬ 
range and type 
checking 

(*$T + *) index testing (arrays, 
case statements) 

(*$S + *) stack overflow 

The directives can be turned off by 
using a minus sign instead of a plus 
sign, or an equal sign can be used to 
change the setting back to the previ¬ 
ous value. 

Directives work the same way in the 
MRI system, but only the first two of 
the three options above are available. 
Both systems also allow several pos¬ 
sible options on the command line 
that invokes the compiler. Among 
these are a listing file and prompting 
for the names of symbol files. 

Language Extensions 

Both compilers claim to accept the 
same Modula-2 language as defined 
by the Modula-2 report (see reference 
2). However, the Logitech system has 
the advantage of some extra PC- 
specific routines available in the Sys¬ 
tem module. Technically, these don't 
count as extensions to the language, 
but most users will think of them that 
way. Among the extensions are rou¬ 
tines to read and set the values of 

8088 registers; enable, disable, and 
initiate interrupts; read and write to 
the 8088 I/O ports; and generate a call 
to the DOS system interrupt. 

The MRI System module contains 
only procedures defined in the 
Modula-2 report. It might be easier to 
write processor and operating-system- 
specific programs with Logitech 
Modula-2. 

To test whether these compilers 
might be useful to owners of PC-com- 
patibles, I checked them out on a 
Compaq portable equipped with two 
floppy-disk drives and 2 56K bytes of 


memory. Both compilers ran several 
small examples properly. Both also 
seemed painfully slow—with all the file 
I/O, a hard-disk drive is almost a ne¬ 
cessity for using one of these com¬ 
pilers. 

Summary 

The compilation/execution speed 
comparisons between the two com¬ 
pilers are not surprising. The MRI 
system compiles programs into M- 
code, which was designed with the 
goal of efficient Modula-2 compila¬ 
tion. Given this background, it makes 
sense that the MRI compiler is faster 
than the Logitech compiler. But the 
MRI programs pay for this advantage 
with their slower execution. The MRI 
software executes programs by inter¬ 
preting the compiled M-code, but the 
Logitech programs' 8088 machine 
code doesn't need interpretation. 

If you just want to learn Modula-2 
and write some programs for your 
own use. the MRI software is probably 
for you. You will appreciate the faster 
compile time with small programs, in 
which execution speed probably 
depends on user input anyway. And 
the MRI software is much cheaper. 

On the other hand, if you want to 
write software to distribute or sell, the 
Logitech system is probably right for 
you. This is especially true if Logitech 
comes out with a linker to produce 
COM or EXE format files. 

If you are one of the relatively few 
PC owners who operates the UCSD p- 
System, you should look into the 
Modula-2 compiler available from 
Volition Systems. However, better 
compilers are likely to become avail¬ 
able at any time, from these com¬ 
panies as well as others. Professor 
Wirth and Jurg Gutknecht of ETH have 
created a fast one-pass Modula-2 
compiler for the Lilith; a compiler for 
the IBM PC derived from this one is 
likely to show up in the future. ■ 

REFERENCES 

1. Gilbreath, Jim. and Gary Gilbreath. 
"Eratosthenes Revisited: Once More 
through the Sieve.” BYTE, January 1983, 
page 283. 

2. Wirth, Niklaus. Programming in Modula-2. 
Springer-Verlag. 1982. 


314 B YT E • FEBRUARY 1985 





























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Inquiry 44 


316 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 












SOFTWARE REVIEW 



E-Mail for the Masses 


MCI Mail 
and Western 
_Unions 

EasyLink 

by Wayne Rash Jr. 


Wayne Rash )r. is a member of the 
professional staff of American 
Management Systems Inc. (Federal 
Consulting Group. 5th Floor. 1925 
North Lynn St.. Arlington. VA 
22209). He consults with the 
federal government in areas 
concerning microcomputers. 


T wo giants of the telecommunica¬ 
tions industry have started elec¬ 
tronic mail services. MCI Telecom¬ 
munications Corporation's MCI Mail and 
Western Union Telegraph Company's Easy¬ 
Link offer the services to individual con¬ 
sumers and businesses. Both services are 
heavily advertised, and both promise to 
open the world of easy and inexpensive in¬ 
stant communications to nearly anyone. 
Only one fully delivers on this promise. 

MCI Mail 

MCI Mail is part of the same corporation 
that provides MCI telephone communica¬ 
tions. MCI has expanded its operations to 
include electronic mail, billing itself as the 
"nation's new postal system." You can ac¬ 
cess MCI Mail with a local phone call in 64 
cities around the country and with a toll- 
free number to its Washington, DC. head¬ 
quarters. You can use these numbers with 
your computer to transmit letters and 
documents to other MCI Mail subscribers 
in the U.S. and Canada or to Tfelex addresses 
anywhere in the world. If your recipient 
does not have access to MCI Mail or Telex, 
you can have a paper copy of the commu¬ 
nication mailed or delivered. As of January 
1. 1985, MCI Mail service was available in 
41 countries. 

MCI Mail's hard-copy communications are 
prepared using a laser printer at 18 loca¬ 
tions in the U.S. Courier delivery is available 
within four hours in some locations, and 
overnight courier delivery is available in 
most major metropolitan areas. Delivery by 
mail usually takes two business days. 
Because they are prepared on a laser 
printer, the MCI letters look like they were 
done on a letter-quality printer and then 
photocopied. You can have your letterhead 
and signature placed on file with MCI so 
they can appear on your letters. Otherwise, 
the MCI Mail letterhead will appear on the 
first page of your letter. 

You can log on to MCI Mail with either a 
300- or 1200-bps (bit per second) modem. 


After you enter your user name and pass¬ 
word. you will read some announcements 
and get a couple of news headlines before 
the main menu appears. Every function of 
MCI Mail is menu operated, and the service 
has extensive help files for every function. 
You can use the built-in text editor to 
prepare your document, or you can trans¬ 
mit a document you have already prepared. 
Once you finish, you can edit the document 
or reformat it before sending it. There is no 
limit to the length of the document you can 
send, but longer documents cost more. 

You can read incoming messages or refer 
to messages you sent out earlier. MCI Mail 
also offers you access to Dow Jones News/ 
Retrieval or lets you order discount mer¬ 
chandise from on-line advertisers. 

EasyLink 

Western Union apparently designed Easy¬ 
Link for experienced users who already 
understand how the system works. You can 
access EasyLink with either a 300- or 
1200-bps modem. You will find no descrip¬ 
tive prompts or menus to lead you through 
the system. You log on at the ID? prompt 
by giving a terminal description, your ID 
number, your user name, and your pass¬ 
word. You enter these on a single line, 
separated by spaces and a period. You will 
not see what you are typing if you are oper¬ 
ating in full duplex. 

Once you gain access to EasyLink. the 
cryptic PTS prompt greets you. You can find 
out what your options are by using the on¬ 
line help facility or by reading the package's 
User Guide or quick-reference guide. Essen¬ 
tially, your choices are: send one of several 
types of messages, read messages waiting 
for you, or use the help facility. An infor¬ 
mation database called FYI is also available 
to EasyLink subscribers, but not from within 
EasyLink. 

EasyLink gives you a wide variety of ways 
to send a communication to others. You can 
send a message directly to another sub- 

(continued) 


FEBRUARY 1985 • B Y T E 317 








REVIEW: E-MAIL 


scriber's mailbox, just as you can with 
MCI Mail, and you can have a mes¬ 
sage mailed to a nonsubscriber using 
what Western Union calls a "computer 
letter." Computer letters are mailed 
from Western Union's facility in the 
Washington, DC, area, which means 
that delivery can take a while for 
some sections of the country. Unlike 
MCI's laser-printed letters, the Easy- 
Link computer letter is printed on 
what appears to be a Teletype printer 
using only uppercase letters. 

Like MCI Mail, EasyLink lets you 
send messages to Telex addresses 
and gives you a Telex address for 
replies. Since you are using Western 
Union, you can use EasyLink to send 
telegrams, mailgrams, and cable¬ 
grams. Western Union also has an ar¬ 
rangement with the U.S. Postal Service 
that lets you send messages through 
the E-COM system, although the long¬ 
term existence of that service is ques¬ 
tionable. 

Using MCI Mail 

Working with MCI Mail, especially for 
the inexperienced, casual, or infre¬ 


quent user, is a pleasant experience. 
About the only information you have 
to remember is your password. As 
you enter the system, every possible 
command is listed for you (see photo 
1). The help files are extensive and de¬ 
tailed, and you can specify the com¬ 
mand or function for which you need 
help. Since the on-line time on MCI 
Mail is free, you don't feel the need 
to rush the process unless you're 
using the 15-cents-per-minute 800 
number. 

Creating a message is easy. Follow¬ 
ing the directions on the main menu, 
you type the word CREATE and enter 
the text editor. The next prompt asks 
for the addressee. After you type in 
the name. MCI Mail checks to see 
whether it matches the name of a sub¬ 
scriber. If one or more names match, 
you are shown a list of names and 
asked to pick the proper one. If the 
person you want is on the list, you 
choose him; otherwise, you will be 
asked to enter his address so the 
message can be mailed. You can 
name any number of addressees 
since the TO: prompt will appear un¬ 


til you enter a blank line. You will be 
prompted to enter the mailing ad¬ 
dress of the recipient and the subject 
of the message. Then MCI Mail 
prompts you to enter the text of the 
message. 

The basic rate for an MCI Mail 
message is $1 for an "MCI ounce" 
transmitted electronically. An ounce 
equals 7500 characters. Short mes¬ 
sages of 500 characters or less cost 
45 cents. The cost for the first ounce 
is $2 if the letter is mailed. In areas 
where courier service is available, you 
can have a letter hand-delivered over¬ 
night for $8 and within four hours for 
$30. In each case the cost for an ad¬ 
ditional ounce is $1. although for 
courier delivery the second ounce is 
free. If you are sending to a Telex ad¬ 
dress. the ounce is quite a bit less, 
about 400 characters, due to a limit 
set by Telex. International rates are 
higher than domestic rates, but still 
within reason. MCI gives you a Telex 
number so your correspondents can 
answer you by Telex. If you use the 
toll-free number, you are charged an 
extra 15 cents per minute. 

Once you complete your message, 
you can read it. If you want to make 
changes, an MCI editing mode has its 
own menus, prompts, and help files. 
You can also see what your document 
will look like when it's printed, com¬ 
plete with spaces reserved for the let¬ 
terhead and the page breaks. You can 
use the edit mode to reformat the let¬ 
ter. Once you are satisfied, you tell 
MCI to send your document by typ¬ 
ing SEND followed by any optional 
delivery methods. Once you send the 
message, a copy is placed in your Out 
box for a day or two. This makes it 
easy to refer to messages later. 

Checking for messages is also easy; 
MCI Mail tells you that your In box 
has a message. You might also be told 
that an unfinished draft is on your 
desk, in the event that you terminated 
an earlier session for some reason 
before sending a message. This is one 
of the nice features of MCI Mail. Once 
you start creating a message, it stays 
in the MCI system. If your computer 
or phone goes dead or your modem 
explodes, the draft of your message 



Cowiand (or HBV or BUI): i 


Ion ms enter; 

INBOX to SCAN sour unread Messages 

mW to SCAN Messages sou sent 

KSI to SCAN Messages read More 

MAH to SCAN four HAFT Message 

All to SCAN ILL sour Messages 

lELf for assistance 


CaaiaJ ft* «H ■» BUT); 



Photo 1: Entry-level and Scan menus for MCI Mail. Your correspondence is organized 
like an office desk. The I n box holds incoming messages , the Out box holds copies of 
messages sent, the desk holds copies of messages received, and the draft folder contains 
a message written but not sent. 


318 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 






REVIEW: E-MAIL 


will be waiting when you return. 

As I mentioned earlier, you can do 
a lot besides send and receive mes¬ 
sages. MCI Mail has an advertising 
section where you can order anything 
from gifts and travel services to fan- 
fold paper and floppy disks. You also 
have access to Dow Jones News/ 
Retrieval at regular Dow Jones rates. 
Off-peak rates are 20 cents a minute 
for 300-bps connections or 40 cents 
for 1200-bps service. Incidentally 
Dow Jones customers also have ac¬ 
cess to MCI Mail as part of their sub¬ 
scription. 

Using EasyLink 

My first impression of EasyLink is that 
it isn't very easy. As I've already dis¬ 
cussed, logging on to the system is 
complicated and tedious. 

Logging on wouldn't be such a 
problem if you were given the neces¬ 
sary information to enter. For exam¬ 
ple, the terminal ID is necessary if you 
are using a personal computer and a 
modem, since EasyLink's default 
mode does not seem to work with 
that type of equipment. The terminal 
codes are listed in Appendix E in the 
User Guide, but the differences be¬ 
tween the 24 terminal codes aren’t ex¬ 
plained. Many users will have little 
luck deciphering them. The first time 
I used EasyLink it took me four tries 
to log on. 

Once you get past the log-on se¬ 
quence. you are faced with the PTS 
prompt (see photo 2). At this point 
you have to enter a slash followed by 
a command. Since EasyLink has no 
menu, you will have to look up all the 
commands in the documentation or 
read the on-line help file. If you don’t 
have a local-access phone number, 
looking at the help file is going to cost 
you 15 cents per minute. Fortunately, 
Western Union has over 400 local- 
access phone numbers in the U.S. 

Since the charges for EasyLink are 
based on the actual connect time, you 
will save yourself money if you 
prepare your messages ahead of time 
and transmit them to EasyLink. You 
can also save money if you minimize 
use of the on-line help by using the 
manual instead. 


You are also charged by the minute 
for the time it takes you to send 
messages. The normal charge for a 
1200-bps connection is 45 cents per 
minute. If you like to compose on line 
or if your modem program can't 
transmit easily, this can run into 
money. You can save 40 percent by 
calling during off-peak hours (12:01 
a.m. to 7 a.m. local time). 

EasyLink has a number of charges 
besides the connect time. For exam¬ 
ple. a computer letter costs you $1.2 5 
for the first page and 40 cents for 
each additional page. A three-page 
letter that costs you $2 to send on 
MCI Mail will cost you $3.30 on 
EasyLink. assuming the total connect 
time was two minutes, the time re¬ 
quired to send the document was one 
minute, and you called using the 
EasyLink toll-free number. Using a 
local-access number would reduce 
the cost by 45 cents. 

Sending messages to other Easy¬ 
Link subscribers is less expensive. The 
basic charge is only 45 cents per 
minute for 1200-bps service, plus 15 
cents per address. A short message 
could go out for less than the 



2 INFORMATION RETRIEVAL 

3 DIRECTOR? INFORM! I OH 

4 CONVERSATIONAL 

?§ help mm 

88 HQ SERVICE MESSAGE 
38 DISCONSCT FR9N SYSTEM 



equivalent message on MCI Mail, but 
a longer one could cost somewhat 
more. If you have to use the WATS line 
to call EasyLink, your costs are almost 
certain to be higher. 

If you are a low-volume user of elec¬ 
tronic mail. EasyLink will be a sub¬ 
stantially more expensive service. 
Even though it has no sign-up fee. 
EasyLink has a $2 5-per-month mini¬ 
mum charge. Depending on the type 
of electronic mail you use. you might 
have to send one piece of mail per 
day just to break even. 

Documentation 

EasyLink definitely has the more com¬ 
plete and attractive documentation. 
When you sign up for EasyLink, 
Western Union sends you a bookshelf- 
size binder. Sections of the book are 
marked by tab dividers, and the pages 
are attractively typeset and easy to 
read. This is an advantage because 
you're probably going to spend lots 
of time reading this manual. 

A disadvantage is that the manual 
is not well organized. The process of 
calling EasyLink, logging on. creating 

( continued ) 



Photo 2: Entry-level prompt and help menu for EasyLink. You enter commands by 
typing a slash and a command word, such as /SCAN to list all messages. /READ to 
read a message , or /HELP for the help files. 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 319 






REVIEW: E-MAIL 


AT A GLANCE 


Name 

EasyLink 

Service Supplier 

Western Union Telegraph Company 
One Lake St. 

Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458 
(800) 336-3797 ext. 908 

Requirements 

Personal computer, modem, and 
telecommunications software, or dedicated 
communications terminal 

Special Features 

Messages can also be sent via Telex, 
telegrams, cablegrams, mailgrams, and 
through the U.S. Postal Service E-COM 
system 

Optional Software 

EasyLink Instant Mail Manager program 
($95) requires IBM PC or compatible 
computer with one disk drive, 256K bytes 
of RAM, and asynchronous communica¬ 
tions modem 

Price 

Minimum monthly charge: $25 
EasyLink mailbox message (maximum 
200,000 characters): 

30 cents/minute (300 bps) 

45 cents/minute (1200 bps) 

EasyLink to Telex (maximum 200,000 
characters): 

43 cents/minute (300 and 1200 bps) 
Mailgram message overnight letter 
(maximum 15,000 characters): 

First page (2700 characters) $3 
Each additional page (3500 characters) 
75 cents 

Computer letter service (maximum 
25,000 characters): 

First page (2700 characters) $1.25 
Each additional page (3500 characters) 
35 cents 


Name 

MCI Mail 

Service Supplier 

MCI Telecommunications Corporation 
1900 M St. NW 
Washington, DC 20036 
(800) 424-6677 

Requirements 

Personal computer, modem, and 
telecommunications software, or dedicated 
communications terminal 

Special Features 

Messages can also be sent via Telex, via 
mail delivery, or via overnight or four-hour 
hand delivery 

Optional Software 

MCI Mail Access program ($49.95) requires 
IBM PC or compatible computer with one 
disk drive, 256K bytes of RAM, and 
asynchronous communications modem 


Price 

Instant letter 


500 characters or less 

$0.45 

7500 characters 

$1 

MCI letter (mail delivery) 

$2 

Overnight letter 

$8 

Four-hour letter 

$30 

Each additional 7500 characters 

$1 

Annual mailbox fee 

$18 


and sending a message, and getting 
off again requires a great deal of flip¬ 
ping through the manual. All the time 
you're looking up what to do next, the 
connect charges are mounting if 
you're calling on the WATS line or are 
in the midst of creating a message. 
|E ditor's note: EasyLink has since issued a 
new User Manual Release 1.3 that ap¬ 
pears to be rewritten and better organized ,| 

The MCI Mail manuals are shorter, 
less fancy, and paper-bound. They in¬ 
clude the Welcome Kit and Service Guide. 
which gives an overview of the ser¬ 
vice, contains some basic information 
on performing routine functions, and 
explains the services available; and 
the Basic User's Guide, which gives 
detailed information on the use of 
MCI Mail. The manuals skip some of 
the functions of MCI Mail (for exam¬ 
ple. sending a Telex message). 

The manuals are much less impor¬ 
tant for the routine use of MCI Mail 
however, since the menus lead you 
through most functions quite well. 
The help files are also excellent and 
do not have a connect charge. 

Customer Support 

I had occasion to call customer sup¬ 
port at MCI Mail twice, and at Western 
Union three times. The personnel at 
MCI Mail were helpful and familiar 
with the service. I received accurate, 
complete answers to both questions. 
Unfortunately. MCI Mail customer 
support is not open on weekends. 

Western Union’s customer service is 
nearly a total contrast. The customer- 
service lines are open on weekends, 
but they might as well be closed. 
Regardless of the time 1 called, the 
support representatives showed little 
familiarity with EasyLink. Once I was 
told that no one knew anything about 
it, but that the representatives were 
trying to learn. In another case, the 
representative had never heard of a 
computer letter and could offer no in¬ 
formation on how to send one or on 
how long it would take to deliver. 

Conclusions 

Both EasyLink and MCI Mail offer 
communications packages to make 

( continued ) 


320 


BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 





“Despite the recent press notices, 
multiuser microcomputers aren’t 

anything new!” 


This is the first in a series of 
discussions with Hod Coleman, 
President of Stride Micro 
(formerly Sage Computer) on 
the 68000 multiuser market 
and Its current environment. 

Q: Why do you say that? 

AC: “The technology to build a 
high performance multiuser sys¬ 
tem has been around for five 
years. And while some of the 
leaders in this industry have been 
pretending that micro multiuser 
didn't exist, we've been shipping 
complete systems for nearly three 
years. The benefits of multiuser 
are undeniable; it is more cost ef¬ 
fective, and offers greater flexibil¬ 
ity and utility. But until just re¬ 
cently, the marketing pressure to 
be compatible instead of being 
better, has blinded the industry.” 

Q: What do you mean? 

RC: “Well, for example, the 
Motorola 68000 processor intro¬ 
duced 16/32-bit technology to the 
personal computer world a long 
time ago. It was fully capable of 



“A surprising feature Is 
compatibility. Everybody 
talks about It, but nobody 
does anything about It.” 


meeting high performance and 
multiuser design requirements in 
1980. Instead of this trend taking 
off, most energy was spent pro¬ 
moting 8088/8086 products that 


were clearly inferior from a tech¬ 
nical point of view. This phenom¬ 
enon leads me to believe that they 
will soon rewrite the old proverb: 
‘Build a better mousetrap and the 
world will beat a path to your 
door,' but only if they can find the 
way through the marketing fog.” 
Q: Are things changing now? 

RC: “Yes and no. With the busi¬ 
ness world starting to take more 
and more interest in microcompu¬ 
ter solutions, the advantages of a 
solid multiuser system couldn't be 
kept hidden forever; companies 
like ours and a few others were 
beginning to make a dent. Instead 
of taking a fresh approach, some 
of the newest multiuser offerings 
will probably only give the tech¬ 
nology an undeserved black eye! 
Multiuser is far more than the 
ability to plug in more terminals. 
It involves things like machine 
compatibility, fast processors, 
adequate memory, large storage 
capacities, backup features, net¬ 
working, and operating system 
flexibility.” 

Q: Is this what makes the new 
Stride 400 Series different? 

RC: “Exactly. That sounds self- 
serving, but it’s true. Today a 
number of companies are intro¬ 
ducing their first multiuser sys¬ 
tem. We've been building and 
shipping multiuser machines for 
almost three years. We know' the 
pitfalls, we’ve fallen into some of 
them. But we have learned from 
our mistakes.” 

Q: Give me some examples. 

RC: A hard disk is almost manda¬ 
tory for any large multiuser in¬ 
stallation. Yet, backing up a hard 
disk can be a nightmare if you 
only have floppies to work with. 
That's why we’ve added a tape 
backup option to all the larger 
Stride 400 Series machines. It’s 
irresponsible for a manufacturer 
to market a multiuser system 
without such backup. Another 
good lesson was bus design. We 
started with one of our own de¬ 
signs, but learned that it’s impor¬ 
tant not only to find a bus that is 
powerful, but also one that has 
good support and a strong future 
to serve tomorrow’s needs. We 



"The marketing pressure 
to be compatible 
Instead of being better, 
has blinded the industry." 


think the VMEbus is the only de¬ 
sign that meets both criteria and 
thus have made it a standard fea¬ 
ture of every Stride 400 Series 
machine.” 

Q: What are some of the other 
unique features of the 400 Series? 
RC: “A surprising feature is com¬ 
patibility. Everybody talks about 
it, but nobody does anything 
about it. Our systems are com¬ 
pletely compatible with each other^ 
from the 420 model starting at ^ 
$2900, through the 440, on to the 
powerful 460 which tops out near 
$60,000. Each system can talk to 
the others via the standard built-in 
local area network. Go ahead and 
compare this with others in the in¬ 
dustry. You'll find their little ma¬ 
chines don't talk to their big ones, 
or that the networking and multi¬ 
user are incompatible, or that they 
have different processors or 
operating systems, and so on.” 

Q: When you were still known as 
Sage Computer, you had a reputa¬ 
tion for performance, is that still 
the case with the new Stride 400 
Series? 

RC: “Certainly, that’s our calling 
card: ‘Performance By Design.' 
Our new systems are actually fas¬ 
ter; our standard processor is a 10 
MHz 68000 running with no wait 


states. That gives us a 25% in¬ 
crease over the Sage models. 
And, we have a 12 MHz pro¬ 
cessor as an option. Let me add 
that speed isn’t the only way to 
judge performance. I think it is 
also measured in our flexibility. 
We support a dozen different 
operating systems, not just one. 
And our systems service a wide 
variety of applications from the 
garage software developer to the 
corporate consumer running high 
volume business applications.” 

Q: Isn’t that the same thing all 
manufacturers say in their ads? 
RC: “Sure it is. But to use another 
over used-term, ‘shop around’. 
We like to think of our systems as 
‘full service 68000 supermicro¬ 
computers.' Take a look at every¬ 
one else’s literature and then 
compare. When you examine 
cost, performance, flexibility, and 
utility, we don't think there’s any¬ 
one else in the 
race. Maybe 
that’s why we’ve 
shipped and 
installed more 
multiuser 68000 
systems than 
anyone else.” 



Formerly Sage Computer 

For more information on Stride or 
the location of the nearest Stride 
Dealer call or write us today. 

We'll also send you a free copy of 
our 32 page product catalog. 

Corporate Offices: 

4905 Energy Way 
Reno, NV 89502 
(702)322-6868 

Regional Offices: 

Boston: (617) 229-6868 
Dallas: (214) 392-7070 


Inquiry 299 


FEBRUARY 1985 ‘BYTE 321 



















GILTRONIX SWITCHES ARE 
THE BEST CHOICE. 


. . and here are 10 good reasons why: 

IBM PC APPLE 


1 Serial (RS232) or 
Parallel 
(Centronics) 

2. Prompt Deliveries 

3. Nationally Adver 
tised Products 

4. Broad Product 
Line 

5. Over 30,000 Units 
Sold to Date 

6 Sales and 
Technical 

Support M anua | Units—2 to f 
Automatic Units—3 to 




7. F.C.C. Approved 
Units 

8. Manual and 
Automatic Units 

9. Highest Quality 
PC Board Switch 
Technology 

10. Buy Direct From 
Giltronix, or From 
Any Authorized 
Distributor 

i Ports 
15 Ports 


rk ol Iniernalional Business Macnines Corporalion 


ryi 

COGiltronix 

iXj 


3780 Fabian Way 
Palo Alto. CA 94303 
(415) 493-1300 


ORDER HOT-LINE: 1-800 531-1300 (Outside of California) 


Inquiry 122 



Heath 

lUsers 


Double Your 
5%" disk storage 
capacity without adding a drive. 

Get twice as much from your H88 or 
H89 microcomputer. Our FDC-880H 
floppy disk controller, in conjunction 
with your 5 1 /" drives, for example, 
expands memory capacity from 256 
bytes to 512 bytes per sector. 

And it handles single and double¬ 
sided, single and double-density, 8" and 
5 1 /" drives — simultaneously. 


Ot 


C.D.R. Systems Inc. 

Controlled Data Recording Systems Inc. 

7210 Clairmont Mesa Blvd., San Diego, CA 92111 
(619 ) 560-1272 


Inquiry 45 


VT100 

$150.* 

'plus your IBM PC or compatible 
Use your IBM PC as a DEC VT100 with 
ZSTEMpc-VTIOO smart terminal emulator 
132 columns by windowing — 
no additional hardware 
Double High/Double Wide Characters 
Complete VT100 line graphics 
Smooth scrolling 

Full keyboard softkeys / MACROS 
Bidirectional file transfers — 
including XMODEM 
Speeds to 38.4KB. High throughput. 
ZSTEM Communications Division 
KEA SYSTEMS LTD. 

#412 - 2150 W. Broadway 
Vancouver, B.C. 

CANADA V6K 4L9 
(604) 732-7411 


SAVE 
TODAY 
WITH OUR 
LOW 
PRICES 
TOR YOUR 
IBM PC 
AND 
COMPATI¬ 
BLES 


INTERNAL SUBSYSTEMS DRIVE CONTROLLER CABLES 
FULL HEI6NT 

10MB $675 15MB *750 ?0MB S12?5 32MB S152S 
HALF HEI6HT 10MB S77S 



WINCHESTER DRIVES [0RIVE ONLY) 


FULL HEI6HT 




10MB FORMATTED 

S425 15MB FORMATTED 

S500 

20MB FORMATTED ( 

saro u IBM AT jui| 

S895 

32MB FORMATTED 



S1095 

HALF HEIGHT 


10MB 

S450 

EXTERNAL SUBSYSTEMS 



10MB 

15MB 

20MB 

32MB 

APPLE SI 150 

SI250 

SI575 

— 

IBM SI 050 

SI 150 

SI525 

SI825 

MISCELLANEOUS 




130 WATT POWER SUPPLY FOR 

IBM PC S165 si 

4164 150 ns 9 CHIP SET |64K) 


S35 s«l 

41256 150 m 256K CERAMIC 


S25 

8087 3 



S1 70 


UNUSUAL 

GIFTS!!!! 


10 KT GOLO FLOPPY DISK SHAPEO JEWELRY WITH 
6ENUINE SAPPHIRE DIAMOND ANO RUBY 
CUFF LINKS (SAPPHIRE ANO DIAMOND! S2I0 
TIE PIN ISAPPHIRE ANO DIAMOND) $175 

LADIES PIN |RUBY ANO DIAMOND! S150 


CALL MET CHEM BULLETIN BOARO (300/1200 BAU0|/203 281 7287 
5 P M 8 A M WEEKOAYS - ANY TIME ON WEEKENDS 


iWet-Cliem 


—__-C _ Met-Chem International Corporation 

|| 2911 Dixwell Avenue Hamden. Conn 06511 
■■ m w^ mm\ phone (203) 248-3212 or 1-800-638-2436 


Inquiry 204 


3M 


diskettes W 


5V4" 

Specify soft, 

10 or 16 sector 



Minimum Order 20 


Single sided 
double density 


1.49e 


1.99e 


Double sided 
double density 

Certified Check - Money Order - Personal Check. Allow up 
to 2 weeks for personal checks to clear. Add $3.00 per 100 
or part to each order for U PS. shipping charges. 

NJ Residents add 6% sales tax 

/no 

178 Route 206 South, RO. Box 993 
Department C 

Somerville, N.J. 08876 • (201) 874-5050 


Inquiry 83 


inaiun i 


Advises, 
Forecasts, 
Simulates, 
Tutors, 
Decides, 
Evaluates, 
Solves, 
Reports. 


Lets you Design, 
create and run 
problem solving 
expert systems on 

the IBM-PC or 
DEC Rainbow. No 

programming, uses 
English language 
knowledge base. 

$ 95 . 


/ 


Level 5 
Research 


4980 S-A1A, Melbourne Bch. FL 32951 
305/729-9046 

CREDIT CARD ORDERS ACCEPTED 


Inquiry 348 


Inquiry 179 


REVIEW: E-MAIL 


EasyLink is slow 


in sending printed 

material anc 

\ can be 

"user-f 

wstile 

i p 


using their services easier. I have not 
had the opportunity to test them, but 
the information I have about them in¬ 
dicates that they are functionally 
equivalent. Both systems run on the 
IBM PC or close compatibles, and 
both make logging on and sending 
messages almost automatic. I would 
consider such a package essential for 
the use of EasyLink. 

I found the difference between 
these two services to be substantial. 
MCI Mail was easy to use and fairly 
inexpensive for the low-volume user, 
and it presented a much more attrac¬ 
tive product when messages were 
delivered on paper. Overnight or four- 
hour delivery of printed material can 
be critically important in some 
circumstances. 

On the other hand, EasyLink was 
anything but easy. For the low-volume 
user it can be very expensive, and a 
printed computer letter is not par¬ 
ticularly attractive. In addition, Easy¬ 
Link is slow in sending printed 
material and can be "user-hostile" in 
the process. Twice I tried to send 
myself a computer letter in order to 
compare delivery time and ap¬ 
pearance. The first try was canceled 
two days after I sent it because a line 
was too long. The second try took 
eight days to arrive. 1 should add that 
Western Union has plans to imple¬ 
ment tv/o-hour and overnight courier 
delivery in 1985. 

EasyLink might be easy if you have 
the communications software sold by 
Western Union, and it might be rela¬ 
tively inexpensive if you send large 
volumes of electronic mail. This is 
especially true if you need the ability 
to send telegrams or use the Postal 
Service’s E-COM system. Otherwise, 
MCI Mail appears to be the electronic 
mail service of choice. ■ 






















































A COMPUTER 
PROGRAM 
DELIVERED VIA 
SATELLITE! 



The Computer 
Chronicler a half- 
hour weekly television 
series brings you an 
in-depth look at the 
latest developments 
in the computer 
world. 


tntttw 


m rrn-m 




Correspondent Ste¬ 
wart Cheifet and 
Gary Kildall, creator 
of CP/M provide 
interviews with indus¬ 
try leaders plus news 
and information from 
Silicon Valley and 
around the world. 

The Computer 
Chronicler every 
week on a 
public television 
station near 
you. 

(Check local listings for 
time and channel.) 


Produced by KCSM, San Mateo. CA and WITF. Harrisburg. PA with 


Ell l¥[ POPULAR _ 

funding from McGraw-Hill's Mr 11 and COMPUTING magazines. 




FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 323 




















































THBB 

COMPUTER 

PROTECTION. 


i 


To safeguard your computer 
against mysterious errors and 
costly servicing, not just any 
surge and noise suppressor 
will do. Serious computer 
problems demand serious 
computer protection... 
DATAGARD® by SL WABER. 

For more information about 
DATAGARD and our complete 
line of Computer Accessories, 
call or write today. 


WABER 


Inquiry 281 


A Division of SL Industries, Inc. 

Computer Accessories Group 
300 Harvard Avenue 
Westville, NJ 08093 
Toll-free (800) 257-8384 
In NJ (609) 456-5400 


Nobody does it better. Nobody can. 

















HARDWARE REVIEW 

a 



Mannesmann 

Tally MT 160 



_An 

adaptable 

dot-matrix 

printer 

by Mark J. Welch 


M ark Welch is a BYTE staff writer. 
He can be contacted at POB 372. 

Hancock. NH 03449. 


M annesmann Tally's MT 160 is a 
small, high-speed, dot-matrix 
printer. You can configure the 
printer using front-panel buttons and a 
printer-generated menu. The printer fea¬ 
tures high-speed, draft-quality printing; a 
slower correspondence-quality mode; and 
a wide range of character sets and printing 
formats. 

The MT 160 is compact—considerably 
more compact than, for example, Epson's 
MX-80—but surprisingly heavy at 18 
pounds. It includes both serial and parallel 
interfaces, so it can be connected to virtual¬ 
ly any computer. 

Mannesmann 'felly advertises the MT 160 
as printing at 160 characters per second 
(cps) in draft-quality mode, or 40 cps in 
correspondence-quality mode. In actual use, 
the MT 160 is faster in draft mode than the 
Epson FX-80, also advertised as a 160-cps 
printer. In its higher-quality correspondence 
mode, however, the MT 160 slows down 
severely, lagging behind the FX-80. 

A wide variety of print modes are sup¬ 
ported by the MT 160, including under¬ 
lining, emphasized (bold), superscript, and 
subscript (see figure 1). In draft-quality 
mode it can print 5, 6, 8.3, 10, 12, 16.7, and 
20 characters per inch (cpi). In correspond¬ 
ence-quality mode, it can print 10 or 12.5 
cpi or proportional spacing. 

In draft mode, the MT 160 prints charac¬ 
ters in a 7- by 9-dot matrix. Uppercase char¬ 
acters use the top 7 by 7 matrix, with lower¬ 
case descenders using the bottom of the 
matrix. In correspondence mode characters 
look almost like typewriter quality. A line 
is printed in two passes. The paper is ad¬ 
vanced a fraction of a line between passes, 
so characters are printed in a 7 by 18 
matrix. In emphasized mode, characters are 
again printed twice; the second impression 
is slightly offset to the side. When the cor¬ 
respondence and emphasized modes are 
combined, it's almost impossible to 
distinguish any dots. 

The printer can be reconfigured to recog¬ 


nize control codes used for other printers. 
This is especially helpful since very little 
software supports the MT 160's standard 
control codes. WordStar text and Lotus 
1-2-3 graphs were printed accurately by the 
MT 160 using this mode. Mannesmann 'felly 
also offers a configuration program for 
Lotus 1-2-3. 

The MT 160 doesn't support italic char¬ 
acters even when Epson control codes are 
used. The lack of italics is a serious handi¬ 
cap, although emphasized characters or 
underlining could be used instead. 

Programmable Features 

One of the most convenient features of the 
MT 160 is that configuration details can be 
selected using the front-panel buttons and 
printed menus, so no DIP (dual-inline pack¬ 
age) switches or jumpers are involved in 
configuring the printer for your computer 
(see listing 1). The current configuration is 
stored when the printer is turned off. 

Many of the print features available 
through software control can be set as 
default parameters (see listing 2). Any of the 
seven character sets available can be 
chosen. If the printer is usually used for 
printing documents in another language, a 
European or other character set can be 
selected as the default. Likewise, form- 
length, print-format, and communications 
parameters can be reset. 

To reconfigure the printer for my serial in¬ 
terface. for example. I simply pressed the 
Yes and No buttons to activate the menu, 
answered Yes to the CHANGE COMM 
CONFIG? prompt, and again to SERIAL 
prompt. While responding to prompts. I had 
to press No quite a few times, but this is 
far simpler than removing the cover to 
move jumpers and reset DIP switches. 

There are six control buttons on the front 
panel of the MT 160. The on-line, form-feed, 
line-feed, and test buttons do what you'd 
expect. TWo additional buttons labeled Yes 
and No allow you to answer the questions 

( continued ) 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 325 








REVIEW: MT 160 


You'll have to go 
out of your way to 
build a special cable 
to hook the MT 160 
up to your system. 


in the reconfiguration mode and also 
combine with other buttons for spe¬ 
cial functions. For example, pressing 
the Yes and the line-feed buttons 
causes the printer to toggle from cor¬ 
respondence to draft mode. 

I dislike loud, nonstop fault alarms, 
so I appreciate that the MT 160 makes 
no noise when a fault occurs. A red 
light indicates a problem. While this 
is better than the endless whine some 
printers produce when the paper runs 
out. I wish it would give a little beep 
so I’d know something was wrong 
right away. 

The MT 160 is not a standard serial 
printer. Its RS-232C connector uses 
pins 11 and 19 to send a busy signal. 


something most computers don't ex¬ 
pect. As a result, you'll almost certain¬ 
ly have to buy or build a special cable 
to connect the MT 160 to your com¬ 
puter. For my older CP/M system. I 
switched pins 19 and 20. For the IBM 
Personal Computer (PC). Mannes- 
mann Tally's service department says 
pin 5 must be swapped with either pin 
11 or 19. Since the MT 160 is con¬ 
figured as data-terminal equipment 
(DTE). IBM PC users will also have to 
swap the connections to pins 2 and 
3 (printer cables are readily available 
that way). The use of pins 11 and 19 
was a surprise to me. You'll have to 
go out of your way to hook up the MT 
160 to your system by either paying 
a premium to have a cable built your 
way or spending the extra time 
building your own. 

Another problem I often find with 
printers is that the paper feeding out 
can feed right back into the printer. 
You'd almost have to work at it to get 
that to happen with the MT 160. 

Power and interface cables often 
seem to need the same path as the 
paper. The MT 160's power cable has 
a right-angle connector at the printer 
end and feeds though a slot in the 


back of the left side of the printer, so 
there's no interference with the paper 
feed. 

The parallel and serial connectors, 
however, feed straight out through the 
path the paper needs when it feeds 
from below. This problem was ag¬ 
gravated when, rather than rewire the 
printer cable. I used an adapter that 
also extended the printer's serial port. 
The right side of the paper dragged 
against this adapter and tore several 
times; there seems to be no solution 
except to wire a new cable especially 
for the MT 160. The parallel port is 
closer to the center of the back of the 
printer, so the cable would have to be 
routed underneath the printer. 

There’s never been a standard 
printer ribbon and Mannesmann Tally 
hasn't tried to change that. When my 
first ribbon faded. I tried to buy a 
replacement at several local computer 
stores. No one at any of the stores 
had seen this kind of ribbon before 
and delivery estimates ranged from 
two days to two weeks. The ribbons 
cost about $13 each—well above an 
average price for other types. If you 
buy an MT 160, you should probably 

( continued ) 


Th i s 

i s t h e fl a n n e s m a n n T 

ally fi T • • 1 6 0 print 

er. 


Th i s 

i s r e g u I -a r d r a f t •••■ q u 

al. i tu output. 



This 

is the double-pass 

1 correspondence-q 

u a 1 i t y * 1 

mode. 

This 

is emphasized mode. 



Th i s 

is emphasized correspondence-quality 

mode. 


Th i s 

is 10 cpi printing. 




Th i 5 

is 12 cpi printing. 




This is 

16.7 cpi printing. 




This is 2 

!0 cpi printing. 




T I-b 

i •s* i S3 cl o> LA fc» 

1. «s* — i d -b h 

■zr • ..... 

wT «L.. 

p s p r" i r't i::, 

Th i 

s iss double;- 

-width 6 a p 

i p r 1 

i n t i n g . 

Th i s 

i s double-width 

3.3 cpi print 

i ng. 


This 

is double-width 10 

cpi printing. 



This 

is 10 cpi correspondence-quality. 



This i 

is 12.5 cpi correspondence-quality. 



This is proportional spaced correspondence-quality. 



Ibis. 

j s y n d e r t j n e d _ t e k t. 




Figure 1: 

Print samples from the Mannesmann Tally MT 160 printer. 




326 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 














AT A GLANCE 


Name 

MT 160 

Manufacturer 

Mannesmann Tally 
8301 South 180th St. 

Kent, WA 98032 
(206) 251-5500 

Type 

High-speed, 80-column dot¬ 
matrix printer 

Size 

14V4 by 93/4 by 6 V 4 inches 

Weight 

18 pounds 

Equipment Needed 

Computer with parallel or 
serial interface, cable 

Features 

Six front-panel buttons; 
reprogrammable configura¬ 
tion; high-speed draft quality 
or slower correspondence 
quality; international character 
sets; graphics 

Documentation 

Operator’s manual, 64 pages 

Price 

$798 



PRINT SPEED (CHARACTERS/SEC) LIST PRICE ($100) 



0 15 30 45 60 75 0 2 4 6 8 10 




GEMINI 10-X 


EPSON FX-80 


Th i s 

is the 

fl a n n e s m a n n T a 1.1 y M T - i 6 0 

printe 

This 

is the 

Epson FX-80, draft mode 

. Th i. s 

i h 1 s 

i s t h e 

St ar Berni n .i -10X Th i s 1 s 

the St 


The output from the Mannesmann Tally MT 160 
dot-matrix printer in draft mode is compared 
with the Epson FX-80 and the Star Micronics 
Gemini 10-X, both in draft mode. The pitch for 
all printers is 10 cpi. The print speeds were 


determined by dividing 3000 characters (50 
lines of 60 As each) by the time required to pro¬ 
duce the output. (See ‘The Art of Benchmark¬ 
ing Printers” by Sergio Mello-Grand, February 
1984 BYTE, page 193.) Prices shown are list. 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 327 































































REVIEW: MT 160 


Listing 1: An example of the interactive way of changing the configuration of 
the MT 160 printer. The printer prints out a short question to which you might 
respond by pressing either a Yes or No button on the printer's control panel. 

RESTORE DEFAULTS ? 

NO 

CHANGE FORM LENGTH ? 

NO 

CHANGE PRINT FORMAT ? 

YES 

CHANGE LPI ? 

NO 

CHANGE CPI ? 

YES 

10 ? 

NO 

12 ? 

NO 

16 ? 

NO 

20 ? 

NO 

CORR.QUAL. 10 ? 

NO 

CORR.QUAL. 12 ? 

YES 

CR IMPLIES LF ? 

NO 

LF AT FULL LINE ? 

YES 

POPC ? 

NO 

CHANGE CHAR SET ? 

YES 

USA ? 

NO 

UK ? 

NO 

NOR/DAN ? 

NO 

SWE/FIN ? 

NO 

GER ? 

NO 

FREN ? 

NO 

SPAN ? 

YES 

SLASH ZERO ? 

NO 

CHANGE AUX CODE SET ? 

YES 

NONE ? 

NO 

E CODES ? 

NO 

D CODES ? 

YES 

CHANGE COMM CONFIG ? 

YES 

CHANGE BUFFER SIZE ? 

NO 

PARALLEL ? 

NO 

SERIAL ? 

YES 

CHANGE BAUD ? 

YES 

9600 ? 

NO 

4800 ? 

NO 

2400 ? 

YES 

CHANGE NO. DATA BITS ? 

NO 

CHANGE NO. STOP BITS ? 

NO 

CHANGE PARITY ? 

NO 

CHANGE BUSY ? 

NO 

CHANGE COMM PROTOCOL ? 

NO 

END OF MENU 



buy spare ribbons and reorder when 
you install the last one. 

Documentation 

I've never seen a printer manual that 
I liked. I found myself flipping through 
the MT 160 manual hunting for sim¬ 
ple details I wish were included in a 
one-page appendix. To its credit, the 
manual does include a careful de¬ 
scription of most (not all) of the con¬ 
figuration menu, as well as brief ex¬ 


planations for each print command 
with examples in BASIC. 

However, the explanations were too 
short, while the four-page control- 
code appendix was too long to be 
useful as a quick-reference guide. 
Several control-code commands 
weren't explained enough and left me 
wondering exactly what they did. 

I'm not sure a novice would under¬ 
stand the MT 160 manual, but anyone 
who has used another printer should 


Listing 2: The current status of the 

printer can be printed out by pressing 
the N o button. 

FORM LENGTH 

11 INCH 

LPI 

6 

CPI 

CORR. QUAL. 

CR IMPLIES LF 

NO 

LF AT FULL LINE 

YES 

POPC 

NO 

LF IMPLIES CR 

NO 

CHAR SET 

SPAN 

SLASH ZERO 

NO 

AUX CODE SET 

D CODES 

BUFFER SIZE 

MAX 

INTERFACE TYPE 

SERIAL 

BAUD 

2400 

NO. DATA BITS 

8 

NO. STOP BITS 

1 

PARITY 

NONE 

BUSY 

LOW 

PROTOCOL 

NONE 


be able to figure it out fairly quickly. 
There is enough information in both 
manuals for a programmer to use 
most of the printer's features, though 
some experimenting may be neces¬ 
sary. 

Mannesmann felly doesn't have a 
toll-free number, but I called the com¬ 
pany several times while configuring 
the printer and looking for a new rib¬ 
bon. Each time I was put through to 
the service department quickly, and 
the person I spoke with answered my 
questions competently. 

Conclusions 

The Mannesmann 'felly MT 160 is a 
fast, high-quality, dot-matrix printer, 
but its price led me to expect more. 
Particularly irritating was the lack of 
italic characters, the unusual serial 
cable configuration, and the nonstan¬ 
dard printer ribbon. Even though the 
printer is well designed, small and 
quiet, I had problems using an 
adapter with the serial port. 

This machine is probably not as 
suited for the home user as some 
other printers, notably the Epson 
FX-80. However, its speed, print quali¬ 
ty, and diverse print modes might 
make it appropriate for office use. ■ 


328 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 







Q why is our workstation 

DATA ACQUISITION SYSTEM 
*THE COMPLETE SOLUTION? 





Keithley DAS' Series 500 workstation data acquisition sys¬ 
tem is the complete solution to your control and measure¬ 
ment needs, present and future. Even a basic configuration 
provides enough power and capacity for most lab and test 
bench applications. As your needs become greater, you can 
set it up to perform more complex or varied operations later 
on. The key is: you configure it for your needs, whenever 
you need to. 


Series 500 


A A CHOICE OF 
• SOFTWARE. 

Our Soft500 package was written to 
give beginners the accessibility and 
ease of use they need to get results, yet 
it also offers more experienced users 
the depth and extra facilities necessary 
for more complex applications. Facili¬ 
ties like high-speed sampling, data 
storage, graphics, statistical analyses 
and memory-mapped I/O for high¬ 
speed data transfer. Our unique inter¬ 
rupt-driven architecture allows data 
acquisition in the background and 
simultaneous real-time analysis, control 
and display in the foreground. What's 
more, with our new Plus500 interface, 
you can also connect IEEE-488 instru¬ 
ments to your PC and put the same 


A A CHOICE OF PCs. 

First of all, the Series 500 sup- 
.# ports the PCs most commonly 
used in lao and R&D work: the IBM PC, 
PC-XT and Portable PC; the Apple II + 
and He; and the Compaq Portable. We 
even support the 808/ coprocessor. 


software environment in 
charge of both interfaces. 
For special needs, there's 
our Chem500 analytical 
chemistry software pack¬ 
age for chromatography, 
spectroscopy, thermal 
analysis and colorim¬ 
etry. And the Series 
I is also supported 


by the Macmillan 
ASYST™ and Lab Note¬ 
book™ software packages. 


A CHOICE OF 
• FUNCTIONS. 


With the Series 500, you can 
choose from a larger library 
of plug-in function cards 
than any other 


company 

offers. 


transducers: thermocouples, strain 
gauges and RTDs; pulse counting; 

4-20 mA current loop input and output; 
direct switching ana sensing of AC 
and DC power lines; and programma¬ 
ble excitation for transducers. All with 
full software support. 

ALL THIS, BACKED 
• BY KEITHLEY 
QUALITY. 

Behind the Series 500 is Keithley's 
40-year reputation for engineering 
excellence and low-level mea¬ 
surement expertise. We 
designed it to provide the 
least noise, the highest 
accuracy and the great¬ 
est thermal stability of 
any PC-based data 
acquisition system. 

BACKED BY 
• KEITHLEY 
SUPPORT, TOO. 

We haven't provided a complete 
solution unless we provide com- 
lete support. And we do. Your Series 
>00 comes with a one-year full war¬ 
ranty and 90 days' free software coun¬ 
seling. Most important, Keithley DAS 
provides you with a toll-free applica¬ 
tions hot line, for the times you need a 
helping hand. 

For a demonstration or more informa¬ 
tion, call us toll-free at 1-800-552-1115. 

In Massachusetts call 617-423-7780. 

Or write us at Keithley DAS, 

349 Congress Street, Boston, MA 02210. 

For literature on the Series 500, 
circle Reader Service Number 168 . 


Choose from 18 analog and digital I/O 
modules; isolated ana non-isolated 
analog input; direct connection of 


KEITHLEY 


© 1984 by Keithley DAS, Boston, Massachusetts 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 329 


Inquiry 168 























SuperSoft Languages 

When Performance Counts 


A programmer’s most 
important software tool is 
the language compiler or 
interpreter he uses. He has 
to depend on it to work 
and work well. 

At SuperSoft, we believe it. 
That’s why we offer three 
excellent compilers: 
SuperSoft FORTRAN, 
SuperSoft C, and SuperSoft 
BASIC. They answer the 
programmer’s need for 
rock solid, dependable 
performance on 
microcomputers. 


SuperSoft 

FORTRAN 


SuperSoft A 

A true Ada* subset 

SuperSoft A is a completely standard 
subset of the Ada language, incor¬ 
porating approximately 63% of the 
standard Ada syntax and including 
such important features as packages 
and separate compilation. For CP/ 
M- 80 microcomputers: $300. 

SuperSoft C 

SuperSoft C is a high-powered, full- 
featured C compiler designed for 
serious C applications. It is fast - 
both in compilation and execution, 
and it is packed with more than 135 
library functions (all delivered in 
source code form). SuperSoft C 
produces optimized assembly code, 
and object code can be ROMed. 

SuperSoft C (for CP/M-80, CP/M-86, 
MS DOS, PC DOS): $350 


With large code and data. 

SuperSoft FORTRAN version 2.0 
with large code and data space 
is now available under MS DOS 
and PC DOS. It gives you the 
power to compile extremely large 
FORTRAN programs on micros. 

It allows double precision and 
complex numbers, full IEEE float¬ 
ing point, and a full range of other 
important features for the serious 
FORTRAN programmer. Both 
8087 support and a RATFOR pre¬ 
processor are optionally available. 
FORTRAN (CP/M-80 & 86, MS 
DOS, PC DOS): $325 
8087 support $50 RATFOR: $ 100 




SuperSoft 

BASIC 

The SuperSoft BASIC compiler lets 
you get serious with business and 
financial programs. It uses BCD 
math to give you highly accurate 
results for demanding applications. 
SuperSoft BASIC is a true native 
code compiler that is generally 
compatible with Microsoft’s BASIC 
interpreter. And an additional 
bonus - no run time license fee is 
required. 

SuperSoft BASIC Compiler (for 
MS DOS, PC DOS, and CP/M-86): 
$300 

Also available for programmers: 

Star-Edit, a full-featured 
programmer’s text editor: $225.00 
Disk-Edit, an invaluable 
programmer’s disk data editor: 
$ 100.00 


To order call: 800-762-6629 

In Illinois call 217-359-2112 


In conjunction with SuperSoft, Supersoft FORTRAN was developed by Small Systems Services, 
Clrbana, IL, a leader in FORTRAN development. 

Japanese Distributor: ASR Corporation International, TBL Building, 7th Floor. 119-9 Toranomon, 
Minato-Ku, Tokyo 105, Japan Tel. 03-5025550. Telex 222-5650 ASRTYO J. 

*Ada is a trademark of the Department of Defense 
PC DOS is a trademark of International Business Machines. 

MS DOS is a trademark of Microsoft. 

CP/M-80 and CP/M-86 are trademarks of Digital Research, Inc. 


SupetSft 

SuperSoft, Inc., 1713 S. Neil St., 

P.O. Box 1628, Champaign, IL 61820 


330 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 304 








REVIEW FEEDBACK 


Sage II and IV 


I was pleased to see the review by Allen 
Munro of the Sage II and Sage IV in your 
July 1984 issue (page 235). I agree with 
the author's conclusion that the Sages are 
fast, powerful, and reliable machines. I've 
owned a Sage IV for almost a year now 
and I’m extremely pleased with it. Not one 
single glitch so far. 

After getting used to the power and 
speed of the Sage it's hard to imagine go¬ 
ing back to a slower machine. The amount 
of Sage software in terms of operating sys¬ 
tems, languages, utilities, and applications 
may cover the broadest range in the in¬ 
dustry. (How many computers offer 10 
operating systems and languages such as 
Ada and APL?) 1 do have some problems 
with Mr. Munro's review, however. I find 
several misleading and simply incorrect 
items. 

First, the graphs are terribly misleading. 
The price graph states that the com¬ 
parison is for systems with "two high- 
capacity floppy-disk drives,'' yet the Sage 
line lists the Sage IV at $7300, which in¬ 
cludes a hard disk. By the way, the price 
shown for the IBM PC XT is considerably 
lower than we've paid for that machine. 

The spreadsheet comparison reaches 
the point of being ridiculous. The graph 
is labeled "Multiplan." Yet we read in the 
fine print that the Sage run was actually 
on Timberline, a p-System spreadsheet 
with many more bells and whistles than 
Multiplan that is consequently much 
slower. This is NOT a benchmark. 

The BASIC calculation comparison is not 
valid. Even though the Sage's power is 
shown to be an advantage here, the com¬ 
parison is still against the Sage. The pro¬ 
cedure states that the calculation test in¬ 
volved 10,000 multiplication and division 
operations. Later, in the fine print, we find 
that the Sage runs were using 64-bit real 
arithmetic. 

There are also minor discrepancies in 
the system standard configurations. For in¬ 
stance, both the II and IV come equipped 
with the IEEE-488 interface as standard 
equipment, not just the IV. Also, the pic¬ 
ture of the computer shown in "At a 
Glance" is a Sage II. not a Sage IV. TYue. 
Sage did try for a short time to market all 


machines as the IV. but soon returned to 
the II/IV separation. As many Sage ads as 
you’ve run. I’m sure you could have ob¬ 
tained the right pictures. 

Incidentally. Mr. Munro failed to note 
some of the more exotic standard features 
of the Sage, such as the fact that its 
multiuser capacity is not operating-system- 
dependent. which means that different 
operating systems with multiusers on each 
can operate simultaneously. Or that multi¬ 
users can be assigned to the same ter¬ 
minal. thus producing concurrency with 
any operating system. 

I'm a professional engineer with over 20 
years of experience in the computer 
arena. I currently direct a large staff of 
scientific programmers using everything 
from PCs. HPs. 3033s. and 3081s up to the 
CRAY-1. I'm convinced that the Sage is by 
far the best computer value in today's 
market. It outperforms many upper-end 
"business oriented" machines, including 
several minicomputers, at a fraction of the 
price. 

Bill Brummett 
Dhahran, Saudi Arabia 

We thank Mr. Brummett for noting an 
error in our Sage review. The prices listed 
for the Sage II/IV on the 'At a Glance" 
page were incorrect. The prices were 
listed as $3200 and $7300. The prices for 
the BYTE standard configuration (in¬ 
cluding terminal two drives, and BASIC) 
should have been $4 790 and $8190. The 
price of the IBM PC, not the XT, was 
given in the graph and was labeled as 
such. 

For our Spreadsheet test we usually 
use Multiplan. For the Sage, we used the 
only spreadsheet available, Timberline. 
The purpose of our spreadsheet test is 
to determine how fast a given system/ 
software combination can perform a 
given task. In this case, the Sage/Timber¬ 
line combination is twice as slow as the 
IBM PC/Multiplan combination. Inciden¬ 
tally, bells and whistles do not always 
slow down a program: for example, Lotus 
1-2-3 runs three times faster than Multi¬ 
plan on the IBM PC. 

As for the BASIC calculation test, again 
we wanted to time how long it took a 
given system to do a given task. Most cal¬ 


culations only require seven significant 
digits. If a system cannot efficiently sup¬ 
port this type of arithmetic, then in this 
test that system is penalized slightly and 
justifiably. 

Finally, there was what looked to be a 
discrepancy in the photograph of the 
Sage. The machine in the picture, which 
we received directly from Sage, was con¬ 
figured as a Sage II but was marked as 
a Sage IV. We were aware of the dis¬ 
crepancy at the time, but we can only 
photograph what we receive. We do not 
change or alter products to put them in 
a better light. We are. however, glad to 
hear that Sage is now labeling their prod¬ 
ucts more logically 

—Rich Malloy 
Senior Technical Editor 

Sanyo MBC 550 


Bill Sudbrink was generally fair in his 
review of the Sanyo MBC 550 (August 
1984. page 270). However, there were ob¬ 
vious errors in the article that do a disser¬ 
vice to an excellent product. Tb begin with, 
the comparison of execution time be¬ 
tween the IBM and Apple running Multi¬ 
plan to the Sanyo running CalcStar was 
misleading and irresponsible. Only the 
fine print at the bottom of the page ex¬ 
plained the untruth of the spreadsheet 
(Multiplan) caption. The fine print further 
stated that "Sanyo BASIC apparently can¬ 
not access other disk drives." This is in¬ 
correct. The author apparently was not 
aware that the catch here is that the drive 
specifier must be in uppercase, such as 
LOAD ‘‘B:filename”. Granted, the docu¬ 
mentation did not point this out. and I 
agree that it was an unfortunate oversight. 

James G. Droppo Jr. feels that the Sanyo 
BASIC screen editor is limited in com¬ 
parison to the IBM Personal Computer 
(PC) BASIC screen editor (see "The 
Double-Drive MBC-555," August 1984. 
page 278). Maybe so. However. I find it 
much more convenient than that which 
comes with some of the PC-compatibles. 
The Sanyo's feature of being able to sus¬ 
pend and resume scrolling during a list is 
super. Entering changes during program 
debugging is also far superior. I can make 

( continued ) 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 331 







REVIEW FEEDBACK 


changes all over the screen, then with one 
touch of the Break key I can be assured 
that every change has. in fact, been 
entered into the program. Thy that in IBM's 
BASICA! 

After having used a Columbia profes¬ 
sionally and a Sanyo recreationally on a 
daily basis for several months. I find that 
I prefer to use the Sanyo, if possible, 
because of its superior keyboard arrange¬ 
ment, its large Return key, a better key 
"feel,'' its handy reset switch, and the 
dedicated asterisk key. 

Orrin B. Iseminger 
Colton, WA 

Revising the Sieve 


Mark Bridger's article, "Four Logos for the 
IBM PC'' (August 1984, page 287). in¬ 
cludes two benchmark programs using the 
Sieve of Eratosthenes—one iterative and 
one recursive. They execute in about the 
same amount of time but differ in how 
many primes can be discovered before 
stack space is gone. IBM Logo used the 
stack space best but it could not get all 
the primes through 1500 using the recur¬ 
sive version in the review. 

In the November 1984 BYTE (page 356), 
Ian MacMillan of Logo Computer Systems 
Inc. gives a revision of the recursive ver¬ 
sion that finds all primes through 1500 on 


a 128K-byte IBM PC. MacMillan's program 
runs about as fast as the other two; its 
main feature is efficient use of tail 
recursion. 

The version in listing 1 uses Logo's prop¬ 
erty lists to increase simplicity. It might not 
use stack space as efficiently, but it seems 
to execute on a 128K-byte IBM PC. 

It also seems to execute faster. For ex¬ 
ample, the Zenith Z-150 takes over 35 
minutes for the primes through 1500 using 
MacMillan's version but only 15 minutes 
for the version in listing 1. 

Furman Smith 
Montgomery, AL 

PeachText 5000 


In the September 1984 Review Feedback 
(page 355), A. Stanbury reported prob¬ 
lems with the PROP ON and PROP OFF 
commands for PeachTbxt 5000. We had 
similar problems, and after about two 
months of talking to our dealer I was 
allowed to talk directly to people at 
Peachtree. They told me about the follow¬ 
ing patch that corrected the problem. 

Use the Debug (under PC-DOS 2.0) utili¬ 
ty to patch the PR I NT. PGM portion of 
PeachTfext. When you are done the screen 
should look like the following: 

DEBUG PRINT.PGM 


- E3558 

091B.3558 A0.F6 0D.06 08.FC 34.07 
80.01 A2.75 0D.0C 08.A0 
091B:3560 F6.0D 06.08 FC.34 07.80 
01.A2 74.0D 04.08 FF. 

-W 

-Q 

Refer to the Debug instructions for the 
correct interpretation of this information. 

To make the superscript and subscript 
function work, it is absolutely essential to 
use one of the printers listed on the con¬ 
figuration menu. Unfortunately, there is no 
way to customize the printer driver to ac¬ 
commodate printers other than those 
listed. I hope this helps. 

John Sonewald 
Rolla, MO 

I am writing in regard to the letter in 
Review Feedback from A. Stanbury 
(September 1984, page 355). 

I have been using PeachTbxt and its 
predecessor, the MagicWand, for more 
than six years and have yet to find 
anything I like better. By comparison, 
WordStar with its voluminous help mes¬ 
sages, disk-intensive editing, and com¬ 
plicated commands is not worth the trou¬ 
ble. Stanbury complains that proportional 
spacing, character spreading, and sub- 
and superscript don't work with PeacKfext. 
It is stated clearly and often in the manual 
that these functions will only work with 
printers (such as the NEC Spinwriter) 
equipped to handle them. 

The only complaint I have with Peach- 
Tbxt 5000 is that it is not integrated, but 
it does the job and the price is right. The 
Heath H-110 (Zenith Z-100 clone) is also 
a best buy. It does everything better than 
the IBM. 

Rod Hallen 
Medan, Indonesia 

Leading Edge PC 


Jeffrey Mazur did a good job in the review 
of the Leading Edge PC (September 1984, 
page 312). However, I want to bring up a 
couple of points. 

First, the fan was not correctly designed. 
It draws air from inside the system unit and 
expels it out the back. This air is drawn 
through such convenient openings as the 
disk-drive doors. This results in dust 
deposits on the inside of the disk drive 
and other boards. 

The second item concerns the Leading 
Edge word processor, which is excellent. 
However, the program came with very few 
printer drivers. After all, many users own 


Listing 1: Revised recursive version of the Sieve program. 

TO SIMPLE.SIEVE :LIMIT 
MAKE “PRIME 2 
CARRY.ON 
END 

TO CARRY.ON 

IF :PRIME > LIMIT (TONE 300 3 STOP) 

PRINT PRIME 

MAKE “FOOTPRINT PRIME 
CROSS.OUT 

MAKE “PRIME PRIME.AFTER PRIME 

CARRY.ON 

END 

TO CROSS.OUT 

IF POOTPRINT > .LIMIT (STOP) 

MAKE “FOOTPRINT POOTPRINT + PRIME 
PPROP POOTPRINT “? “N 
CROSS.OUT 
END 

TO PRIME.AFTER :NUMBER 
MAKE “NUMBER :NUMBER + 1 

IF NOT GPROP :NUMBER “? = “N (OUTPUT :NUMBER) 

OUTPUT PRIME.AFTER :NUMBER 

END 


332 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 









REVIEW FEEDBACK 


Okidatas and the newer Epsons. What 
caused my concern was that my MX-80 
(type 3) is capable of solid underlining, 
italics, and super- and subscripting, but the 
word processor does not support these 
features. My dealer told me that Leading 
Edge will provide additional printer 
drivers in the future. 

I feel that 1 have made the right decision 
in buying the Leading Edge PC. The only 
alternative is an IBM PC; if purchased 
locally with similar software, it would cost 
almost $14,000. 

Ramesh Indhewat 

Bangkok, Thailand 

Leading Edge 
Word Processing 


The software review entitled "Leading 
Edge and MultiMate" (November 1984, 
page 287) is strewn with bias and inac¬ 
curacies. Our documentation is being 
rewritten, the latest 1.2 version of the soft¬ 
ware has increased speed, and at no point 
in time could it be considered inefficient. 
If during the reviewing process the 
reviewer had called us to find out 
something about the future of our 
package, that could have been reported. 

We are, if anything, faster than MultiMate 
in just about everything and give Word¬ 
Star a run for the money in almost all 
categories. We also provide easy-to-use 
and easy-to-learn word processing that we 
feel is leagues ahead of WordStar. How 
does the reviewer know that "Programs 
like MultiMate and Leading Edge might be 
easy to teach because they are designed 
for correspondence and short reports, 
projects that require few commands'? 
Both Leading Edge and MultiMate have 
many similarities to the Wang word pro¬ 
cessor. Surely the reviewer doesn't intend 
us to believe that the original Wang word 
processor was designed solely for short 
reports and correspondence. 

Finally, this is the only reviewer to date 
who did not like Leading Edge Word Pro¬ 
cessing or see it as a great value for the 
money. It is not wrong to be different or 
to state opposing points of view, as long 
as one has done the research correctly, 
thoroughly, and fairly. In comparing our 
1.1 version with the current version of 
MultiMate and WordStar, the author has 
done a grave disservice to BYTE's readers. 

J. B. Royal 
Senior Vice President 
Word Processing R&D 
Leading Edge Products Inc. 

Canton, MA 


Spirit 80 


I was pleased to see Mark Welch's review 
of the Mannesmann T£lly Spirit 80 printer. 
(November 1984, page 335). I agree with 
your conclusions that it represents a fine 
combination of improved print quality and 
lower price. 

I've experienced the occasional paper 
jamming that Welch mentioned, but only 
when I tried to print from the top of a cut 
sheet of paper. What seems to happen is 
that the paper is hampered as it first goes 
through the paper bail rollers and jams 
either against them or against the remov¬ 
able cover. The remedy is to have about 
a half-inch of paper past the print head 
when starting printing or a full sheet if 
beginning precisely at the top of the form 
is essential. If an adjustment of the top of 
the form is desirable you can ask the 
printer to pause at the end of the first 
page. Using these procedures, I've had no 
jamming. 

TWo points Welch does not mention 
might be of importance to some users. 
The cassette ribbons used by the Spirit 80 


are specific to it and list for about $12. 
though I've found them for $7 at a dis¬ 
count house. Second, the replaceable 
print head is rated at 30 million characters, 
significantly less than some other dot¬ 
matrix printers; for medium use. I still con¬ 
sider it adequate (at 1.6K bytes per page, 
that represents about 19,000 double¬ 
spaced pages). 

Christopher Conly 
Seattle, WA 

Sanyo Customer Support 


I would like to share Harvey J. Cooper- 
smith's complaint in Review Feedback 
(November 1984, page 357) about Sanyo's 
poor response to owner's problems. I 
bought the Sanyo 1250 and had difficulty 
booting up the CalcStar program. 

I forwarded to Sanyo the error mes¬ 
sages, original disks, warranty, and original 
purchase receipt with instructions written 
in large letters to return the receipt for my 
income tax records. Sanyo returned the 
original disks with a scribbled note stating 

( continued ) 


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Inquiry 176 


FEBRUARY 1985 ‘BYTE 333 
































REVIEW FEEDBACK 


that its testing equipment found no prob¬ 
lems. The booting problem remained, and 
Sanyo offered no explanations for the 
error messages. Moreover, the company 
did not return the warranty or the original 
purchase receipt as 1 requested. For¬ 
tunately, I resolved the booting problem 
by PIPping the components of CalcStar 
between the two disks. 

Maxim W. Mikulak 
Nesconset, NY 

Gifford Update 


Since my recent review ("Gifford's MP/M 
8-16,'' January, page 305) Gifford Computer 
Systems (2446 Verna Court, San Leandro, 
CA 94577, (415) 895-0798) has started 
shipping MC-DOS, the multiuser concur¬ 
rent disk operating system. This operating 
system is one of the first implementations 
of Digital Research Inc.'s Concurrent CP/M 
3.1 to be available for non-IBM hardware. 
MC-DOS resembles MP/M 8-16 at the user- 
interface level, so the user who is already 
familiar with the older Gifford offering 
needs little training. Upgrades include a 


simple update guide for converting from 
MP/M 8-16 to MC-DOS. 

MC-DOS has several advantages, includ¬ 
ing increased speed. Concurrent CP/M is 
basically an outgrowth of MP/M-86 and 
uses disk buffering, directory buffering, 
hashing, etc., to allow faster operation. The 
M-Drive/H 512K-byte board is no longer 
used as a disk emulator but serves as 
a large hard-disk buffer. A utility locks 
any files into this buffer, so they are unaf¬ 
fected by the LRU (least recently used) 
technique of buffer flushing. This provides 
an MC-DOS user with the advantages of 
a large buffer and a solid-state disk 
emulator. 

Gifford incorporated local-area network¬ 
ing into its new operating system. Optional 
Arcnet hardware is available for Gifford's 
S-100 systems and IBM PCs, and all appro¬ 
priate utilities in the MC-DOS package 
have been modified. 

Also new from Gifford is the Macrotech 
MI-286 dual-processor board, now sup¬ 
ported and shipped in most Gifford sys¬ 
tems. This board was designed as a plug- 
compatible replacement for the Compu- 


TOUGH LOCAL NETWORK PROBLEM- 

“How can our department get our six computers and three 
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NetCommander is a smart, small Local 
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for a printer, modem, or shared disk. Those devices can be 
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NetCommander is a smart, small, efficient network manager. 

For more information, call or write: 

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Digital Products Inc. • The Simple Network Solution Company 
600 Pleasant Street • Watertown, MA • 02172 
(617) 924-1680 • Outside Mass., call 1-800-243-2333 
And check out our 30-day trial evaluation. 


Pro 8085/8088 board. It comes in its stan¬ 
dard configuration with a 6-MHz 80286, 
an 8-MHz Z80H, and a socket for an op¬ 
tional 5.33-MHz 80287 numeric processor. 
Operating in an 8086-compatible mode, 
the Ml-286 offers as much as two-and-a- 
half times more throughput under ideal 
circumstances. 

MC-DOS lists for $695, and you must 
order it for a specific hardware configura¬ 
tion. MP/M 8-16 is listed in the price guide 
for $1345. The networking software and 
a single board cost $895. A networking 
package for the IBM PC XT and compati¬ 
bles is available. Passive hubs (connecting 
up to four nodes, 200-foot maximum) are 
$95, while an active hub (eight nodes, 
2000-foot maximum) is $795. The Macro¬ 
tech MI-286 processor board with the 
standard Gifford two-year replacement 
warranty is $1595, and the 80287 numeric 
processor is $650. 

Charles H. Strom 
New York, NY 

The Compaq DeskPro 


I noticed with interest in the November 
1984 Reviewer’s Notebook (page 261) that 
you have been using a Compaq DeskPro. 
The DeskPro is not compatible with the 
384K-byte Quadram Quadboards; I have 
tried three in my DeskPro and each makes 
the screen go into outer space when the 
machine tries to switch resolutions on the 
monochrome monitor. Compaq claims on 
the telephone that this board is compati¬ 
ble with the machine, and people at 
Quadram have discussed it for the past six 
weeks or so. but I think it is clear that the 
board is not usable with this computer. 
Dealing with Quadram about this has 
soured me on them as a source of 
peripherals for IBM-type machines—their 
support is weak. 

A couple of additional points: Compaq's 
documentation is helpful in setting up the 
machine, but it doesn't include much tech¬ 
nical information (like a memory map), 
and Compaq’s customer-support tele¬ 
phone number will only answer real ques¬ 
tions from dealers, not end users. 

George Carey 
Marietta, GA 


REVIEW FEEDBACK is a new column of 
readers' letters. We welcome responses 
that support or challenge BYTE reviews. 
Send letters to Review Feedback, BYTE 
Publications, POB 372, Hancock, NH 
03449. Name and address must be on 
all letters. 


334 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 372 













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Inquiry 217 tor Dealers 

'In California use our direct line Inquiry 238 for End-Users. 






TROUBLES HAVE WE ALL, and this month Jerry Pournelle mentions 
some space problems at Chaos Manor, talks about the problem of 
choosing computer books, and still finds time to look at some 
interesting goodies. 

In BYTE Japan, columnist Bill Raike's trip to the 1984 Data Show pro¬ 
vides some information on disk-drive storage technology and laser 
printers. 

From California, BYTE West Coast looks at a high-resolution digitizer 
for the Mac, some new workstations, and the windowing game. 

Dick Pountain, our U.K. contributing editor, appears to have found 
the system that he's always wanted—and this time it's affordable. 

We introduce a new column this month—Computers and Law. 
Attorneys Robert Greene Sterne and Perry J. Saidman begin with the 
legal issues of copying software. 

Also this month. Steve Ciarcia again finds time to answer readers' 
questions about his projects in Circuit Cellar Feedback. 



Computing at Chaos Manor: Troubles by Jerry Pournelle . 339 



Chaos Manor Mail conducted by Jerry Pournelle .359 

BYTE Jai*n: Disks and Printers by William M. Raike .367 

BYTE West Coast: What Next? 

by John Markoff. Phillip Robinson, and Ezra Shapiro .371 

BYTE U.K.: Realizing a Dream by Dick Pountain .379 

Computers and Law: Copying Mass-Marketed Software 

by Robert Greene Sterne and Perry J. Saidman .387 

Circuit Cellar Feedback conducted by Steve Ciarcia .393 




















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COMPUTING 
AT CHAOS MANOR 


Troubles 


Computer Books 
SemiDisk 
VaIdocs/QX-10 Revisited 
PCturbo 186 
PC Reset 
Electric Dragon 
Small Disks 
Newmedia 


SPUZ 

UNIX 


Flow Charting 



by Jerry Pournelle 


Jerry Pournelle holds a doctorate in 
psychology and is a science-fiction 
writer who also earns a comfortable 
living writing about computers 
present and future. 


■ have problems. My office its exten¬ 
sion, the back room, and indeed my 
whole house are filled with software, 
books, computers, and computer com¬ 
ponents. 

I've foreseen the crisis. We have plans for 
rebuilding Chaos Manor, adding a large new 
library, office, and workshop as a second 
story. If I can get that up, I'll last awhile 
longer. Alas, my real problem is with the city 
of Los Angeles, which has taken nearly a 
year to process my application to let me 
build that second story. If I have any friends 
in the appropriate departments—it's a yard 
variance I need, to let me build out even 
with the existing office extension—HELP! 

Books Ahoy 

I've just sent in the final version of my Adven¬ 
tures in Microland (Baen Books, spring 1985). 
Like The Users Guide to Small Computers (Baen 
Books, 1984), it's a collection of my BYTE 
and Popular Computing columns with con¬ 
siderable updating. 1 don't change the col¬ 
umns, but I do add information and com¬ 
ments to make them up-to-the-minute time¬ 
ly. Indeed, Adventures will contain columns 
that haven't been published as I write this. 

After I finished the book I called my pub¬ 
lisher, Jim Baen; what he told me is very 
disturbing. 

It also gives me a problem. I want to enlist 
your help in what I think is a cause impor¬ 
tant to all of us. So far, so good, but I'm 
hardly a disinterested party. 

The Book Explosion 

The problem is real: there's been an enor¬ 
mous explosion of computer books. 
Publishers Weekly estimated the total 1985 
sales of computer books to be comparable 
to fiction. However, there are so many com¬ 
puter books that no one of them does very 
well. Moreover, many of those books are 
pure schlock. Many publishers, seeing the 
rapid expansion of the computer-book 
category, simply flooded the market with 
books regardless of their quality. Quick in, 


quick profit, quick out. The result is that the 
field will soon be awash in dreck; and by 
a kind of Gresham's law, the bad books 
drive out the good ones. Publishers who 
take their time, bringing out carefully edited 
books of high quality—publishers like 
Que—are already being forced out, leaving 
the field to the schlockmeisters and 
hypesters. 

The problem is curable but complicated. 
What's happening is that book buyers—the 
book-chain and book-distributor officials 
charged with actually ordering the books— 
do not know the difference between the 
good and the bad. How could they? A year 
ago these same people were buying 
romances. Romances are down, computer 
books are up, so their assignments 
changed. They didn't read the romances 
they used to buy, and they aren't reading 
the computer books they buy now. 

My books sell fine once they get to the 
bookstores—but the only reason they get 
to the store in the first place is that the 
salespeople remember me as a science- 
fiction writer. Frank Herbert wrote a com¬ 
puter book. So did Pournelle. Neither the 
book buyers nor the publisher’s sales force 
ever heard of this column, or indeed of 
BYTE magazine; magazine sales are 
handled by entirely different people. Since 
buyers don't know the difference between 
good and bad computer books, they order 
"some of each." If the salespeople insist that 
a particular book is hot, the buyer may 
order twice as many of that one; still not 
enough to make any sales. 

The Remedy 

The only cure for this is consumer organiza¬ 
tion, and the only relevant organized con¬ 
sumer groups I know of are the enthusiasts 
and hobbyists. The largest block of those 
are BYTE readers. There was a time when 
we enthusiasts were the computer revolution. 
We're still the largest organized part of it. 
We're also the people who lose the most 

( continued ) 


FEBRUARY 1985 ‘BYTE 339 

















CHAOS MANOR 


if computer-book publishing is aban¬ 
doned to drecksters and schlock- 
meisters. We need good books. 

It's time for us to do something 
about the situation. If we don't, no 
one will. 

Several things must happen. First, 
most of us are accustomed to buying 
computer books in specialty stores. 
That's not the way to influence what's 
published. The impact is made in 
regular bookstores, and particularly in 
the big book chains: which means 
that if you don't see the computer 
books you want at your local B. Dalton 
and Waldenbooks, say something to 
the manager. Better yet. put in a 
special order. The only way the book 
buyers will know which are the best 
computer books is for store managers 
to tell them—and the only information 
source the managers have is us. Most 
of their customers don't know a good 
computer book from a bad one. The 
average computer-book buyer is so 
used to being ripped off that yet 
another overhyped horror isn't even 
noticed. 

It isn't enough to praise the good 
books. You must also condemn the 
bad. Now do understand what I mean 
by a bad book. I'm not talking about 
books that I disagree with or say "bad 
things,'' as for example the silly books 
that try to claim that computers are 
bad for poor people. I am thoroughly 
uninterested in censorship of ideas. 
No; by "bad books'' I mean those that 
are poorly edited, filled with typos 
and misspelled words, crammed with 
jargon; books with neither index nor 
analytical table of contents; books 
written so poorly that you don't know 
whether or not you disagree with the 
authors because you can't understand 
what they said. Books with programs 
that can't possibly run. Books filled 
with obsolete materials. 

There are plenty of such books, and 
if you discover that a particular 
publisher seems to bring out a lot of 
them—you won't have any trouble 
finding them if you look on the 
shelves of your local B. Dalton—then 
take them to the bookstore manager. 
Show her why these are bad books. 
Make sure she notices which pub¬ 


lisher put them out. 

There's another odd phenomenon: 
newcomers to the computer field are 
desperate for books, so much so that 
they pay little attention to price. It's 
strange: but a book will sell about as 
well at $19.95 as it does at $9.95. 
Publishers notice this sort of thing. If 
it keeps up, pretty soon there aren't 
going to be any low-cost books. In¬ 
cidentally, my own Pournelle Users 
Guide books, including both The Users 
Guide to Small Computers and Adventures 
in Microland , sell for $9.95. They'd sell 
for even less if there were the slightest 
evidence that lowering the price 
would sell significantly more books. 

If a certain publishing line con¬ 
sistently puts out overpriced schlock, 
complain loudly and often. If you find 
a publisher who consistently puts out 
good books at decent prices, tell your 
store manager that. 

Baen tells me that he can make five 
times the profit publishing science 
fiction—quality science fiction—than 
computer books. It's true for me, too: 
my advances for computer books are 
a pretty small fraction of what I can 
get for science fiction. So far, the love 
of the field—I really like writing about 
little computers—keeps me putting 
out the books, while hope that the 
market will settle into something 
reasonable keeps quality outfits like 
Baen Books publishing them, but it's 
a strain. The real computer en¬ 
thusiasts, led by BYTE readers, could 
make things a lot easier for the good 
guys. 

SemiDisk 

Speaking of good guys, SemiDisk Sys¬ 
tems of Beaverton, Oregon, continues 
to develop a high-quality line of RAM- 
disk products for S-100 machines, IBM 
PCs and PClones. and the Epson 
QX-10. They've now got SemiDisk 
boards with up to 2 megabytes on 
board, and I believe their costs are 
now the lowest per megabyte in the 
industry. A RAM (random-access 
read/write memory) disk, for those 
few who tuned in late, is a method of 
fooling your computer into believing 
that a block of memory is a very fast 
disk; indeed, the computer can't tell 


the difference. In CP/M systems, we 
generally designate the RAM disk as 
M: (for memory drive); once installed, 
you use it as you would any other disk 
drive, copying files to and from it (use 
COPY in MS-DOS and PIP in CP/M), 
renaming files, erasing them, marking 
them read-only. etc. 

The time saved can be quite signifi¬ 
cant. For instance, my accounting sys¬ 
tem begins with a journal, which is a 
report, in chronological order, of 
every financial transaction: income 
from my agent, or BYTE, or speaking 
engagements; travel expenses, com¬ 
puter supplies, salaries to my 
assistants, etc. From time to time, 
these must be posted into the general 
ledger. Since the files are quite large, 
each page of my ledger is a random- 
access disk file. There are about 200 
ledger pages, and each month's jour¬ 
nal has a couple of hundred entries. 

Due to sloth, I seldom post all these 
until year's end. That can take time. 
With 8-inch floppy disks, it takes about 
three hours. With my CompuPro 
(Quantum) hard disk, it takes about 50 
minutes. With a RAM disk, it takes just 
under 11 minutes to do a year's 
posting. Now true: in my CompuPro 
system I'm using a CompuPro M- 
Drive/H RAM disk; but we've done 
speed comparisons between Semi- 
Disk's S-100 boards and the Compu¬ 
Pro, and they're nearly identical. 
We’ve had a SemiDisk board running 
in Helen, Alex's CCS S-100 computer, 
for nearly three years with no prob¬ 
lems at all. 

Except for power failures. RAM 
disks are much more reliable than 
physical disk drives. There are no 
moving parts and no door latches to 
break (Barry Workman reports that 
he's still doing a brisk business in Ten¬ 
don drive-door latches). There's no 
maintenance and no problems with 
disks lunched by cats, tobacco, or 
stray magnetic fields. SemiDisk makes 
a battery backup unit; you can plug 
it into the wall, so that if you turn off 
your computer, the memory stored 
on SemiDisk doesn't go away; and if 
there is a power failure, the files are 
protected for up to six hours. 

That six-hour limit does bother me 


340 B Y T E • FEBRUARY 1985 





CHAOS MANOR 


somewhat, but in actual fact the 
longest power failure we've endured 
in 20 years here at Chaos Manor was 
only about four hours, and it hap¬ 
pened in the middle of the night. In 
fact, that data on my RAM disks is 
safer than the rest of what I'm doing 
since, although I've intended to get 
one for years, I blush to confess I am 
not using an uninterruptible power 
supply. I intend to get one Real Soon 
Now. 

As I said above, SemiDisk makes 
RAM-disk boards for the Epson 
QX-10; they’ve done that for years, 
and therein lies a tale. 

Valdocs Comes FORTH 
Again 

The Epson QX-10 story is very odd. 
Back in mid-1982 Chris Rutkowski, 
president of Rising Star Industries, 
secretly showed the upcoming Epson 
computer to a number of writers. 
Rutkowski had been heavily involved 
in marketing the Epson printers (he 
once told me that he had made them 
the success they were) and was given 
a contract to develop unique software 
for the QX-10; he seemed to be in¬ 
volved with marketing the QX-10 at 
that time. 

The Epson QX-10 was yet another 
Z80 in a market flooded with new Z80 
machines, but it did have some 
special features. First, it had a bit¬ 
mapped screen, meaning that it was 
capable of better graphics than 
almost anything then on the market. 
Second, it could hook into an Epson 
dot-matrix printer, so that the on¬ 
screen graphics could be translated 
into hard copy. 

Third, the QX-10 would come out 
with Rutkowski's own keyboard 
design, which he called the HASCI; 
the acronym stood for human applica¬ 
tions standard computer interface. 
Rutkowski predicted a great future for 
that design; so great that he was go¬ 
ing to license it and charge 50 cents 
a copy, the money to go to a research 
institute that would improve human/ 
machine interface designs. The HASCI 
keyboard had a good feel and was in¬ 
tended for newcomers; Rutkowski 

( continued ) 


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FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 341 
















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CHAOS MANOR 


tried to make it like a typewriter by, 
for example, putting the Escape key 
well off to one side and labeling it 
"Margin Release." There were some 
other special-function keys with labels 
like "Edit" and "Copy" and "Delete 
Line." 

The QX-10's really big feature 
though, was to be the integrated soft¬ 
ware known as Valdocs; this was go¬ 
ing to be so wonderful that Epson 
would stop the IBM flood, save the 
Z80 computer, and. while they were 
at it, wipe out CP/M. Epson pinned so 
many hopes on Valdocs that the com¬ 
pany didn't even have a CP/M version 
of the machine. Valdocs ran under 
TP/M, which is a kind of CP/M work- 
alike different enough from CP/M that 
CP/M hackers have real problems with 
it. 

More: the whole Valdocs/TP/M soft¬ 
ware package was developed in 
STOIC which is an offshoot of FORTH. 
The machine itself used a hardware 
bus developed by Epson America 
and employed by no one else. The 
result was that there were essentially 
no independent software or hardware 
developers interested in the Epson 
QX-10. 

Freezing out independent devel¬ 
opers has been the formula for finan¬ 
cial disaster for every computer com¬ 
pany that has tried it so far. Epson 
was going to bring it off, though, 
because of Chris Rutkowski, Rising 
Star Industries, and Valdocs. Valdocs 
would do everything. It made charts, 
wrote documents, kept track of files, 
made file indexes, took care of com¬ 
munications, did calculations, and 
kept track of calendars: in other 
words, at least what Borland's Side- 
kick plus WordStar does on the IBM 
PC and other 16-bit machines. 
Rutkowski had promised a salable ver¬ 
sion of Valdocs by the end of 1982. 
Epson America believed him and 
began a big advertising campaign. 

Alas. Valdocs wasn't ready in 
January of 1983. The first versions 
were sent to test sites. I got one. I 
really wanted it to succeed, but it was 
a disaster. Valdocs was slow, sent 
without documents, easy to learn but 

( continued ) 











































































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A447 


FEBRUARY 1985 'BYTE 343 


























CHAOS MANOR 


hard to use, and quite capable of los¬ 
ing your files without warning. It could 
take up to a full minute simply to 
erase an unwanted file, and it took 
about 15 minutes to use Valdocs to 
create a one-paragraph letter. As to 
TP/M, the only documentation was 
some photocopied sheets so dim that 
I couldn't read them in strong light 
with a powerful glass; and it blew up 
if you tried to use standard CP/M util¬ 
ities such as SWEEP. 

Over the course of 1983, version 
after version of Valdocs (and, I sup¬ 
pose, of TP/M) emerged from Rising 
Star. All were improvements, but none 
were very good. In the September 
1983 BYTE (Valdocs Revisited, page 
480), Rutkowski promised that 
Valdocs 2.0 would fix everything and 
that it would be available soon (italics 
his). My answer was that I hoped he 
was right, but 1 didn't believe it; in my 
view, Valdocs was too ambitious for 
the Z80 chip. To do what Rutkowski 
wanted his software to do, you'd need 
a great deal more memory (8-bit com¬ 
puter chips such as the Z80 can ad¬ 
dress only 64K bytes of memory 
directly; to have access to more re¬ 
quires kludges). 

One Possible Fix 

There was, though, one obvious im¬ 
provement that could be made to 
Valdocs: a RAM disk could probably 
take the software well past tolerable. 
The Epson used a very conserva¬ 
tive—and slow—disk-control system, 
and Valdocs is heavily dependent on 
disk operations, making it painful; but 
with a RAM disk it might become a 
pleasure to use. 

Apparently the people at SemiDisk 
thought so. In any event, they devel¬ 
oped a SemiDisk for the Epson QX-10. 
In the meantime, Epson had brought 
out a CP/M version of the QX-10. The 
CP/M Epson was a nice little machine, 
well made and handsome, but not 
particularly distinguished among Z80 
machines except for its extremely nice 
screen and graphics. The SemiDisk 
worked splendidly with the CP/M 
Epson—but of course that wasn't the 
system that needed the RAM disk. 
Alas, they never did get the software 


to connect up the SemiDisk to 
Valdocs. 

I don't blame them, understand. 
Working with an operating system 
written in FORTH and intended to ape 
CP/M is my idea of purgatory. The fact 
remains that even with plenty of 
cooperation from Rising Star, they 
never were able to tie SemiDisk to 
Valdocs; so we were never able to see 
whether the speed improvements 
would make Valdocs tolerable. 

A RAM disk would certainly have 
helped Valdocs. The trouble is that it's 
not really an integrated software 
package. It's not even callable on de¬ 
mand. It's only a set of chained 
programs. 

That is: when you invoke Sidekick 
on your IBM PC. the program is already 
in memory and so is your own work 
in progress. Whatever you were do¬ 
ing stays where it was, while Sidekick 
operates with its own section of the 
PC's memory cells. If Sidekick needs 
to call in a file from disk—such as the 
calendar or the help file—it does it, 
but it still hasn't disturbed what you 
were doing. The result is that when 
you exit Sidekick, you're right back 
where you were when you brought it 
in. 

Valdocs doesn't work that way. 
When you change functions in 
Valdocs, it must first save your current 
work to disk, then bring the new job 
in off the disk. When you return to 
your previous work, that process is 
reversed. Disk operations are slow. 
Five-inch floppies are very slow. If 
Valdocs could have been hooked up 
with a good RAM disk, the slowest 
and worst part would be speeded by 
a factor of at least 10, and Valdocs 
might have been tolerable. Alas, that 
didn't happen. 

Real Soon Now 

In October 1984 Rutkowski an¬ 
nounced the imminent release of 
Valdocs 2.0 in a big press conference. 
Computer writers who were present— 

I didn't go; it was in the Bay Area and 
I live in Hollywood—had mixed reac¬ 
tions. The BYTE staff wasn't very im¬ 
pressed, especially when they were 
told that certain features promised for 


2.0 would be implemented in "the 
next version." 

Valdocs 2.0 was developed with a 
new language: according to Rising 
Star, a greatly improved version of 
FORTH. It will employ a new operat¬ 
ing system, TP/M 3. It was developed 
under a radical new organizational 
structure: many programmers, work¬ 
ing individually in locations from New 
Hampshire to Hollywood, linked by 
electronic mail, each working on a 
small part of the system. I wasn't told 
whether the documents were 
developed that way; perhaps it 
doesn't matter, since Rutkowski once 
told me that he didn't consider 
documents necessary anyway. The 
program ought to teach itself. 

The people at SemiDisk have been 
told by Rising Star that the software 
drivers for using a SemiDisk RAM disk 
with Valdocs 2.0 and TP/M 3 are 
"already written and installed direct¬ 
ly into the operating system." More¬ 
over, they actually have a copy of 
TP/M; they do not have Valdocs. 

My advice to QX-10 owners is not 
to hold your breath. The Valdocs 2.0 
release date is said to be January of 
1985. At the moment (December 12, 
1984), the software technicians inside 
Epson America do not have copies of 
Valdocs 2.0. 

Valdocs was a valiant effort. In my 
judgment, it was doomed from the 
beginning: 8-bit machinery just isn't 
powerful enough for what Valdocs at¬ 
tempted even if you don't further 
handicap it by trying to do it in 
FORTH. It's a kind of moot question 
anyway, now that the 16-bit integrated 
software packages are beginning to 
deliver what Valdocs promised. 

I've never understood the people at 
Epson America. They had everything 
going for them, but somehow they 
hitched themselves irrevocably to Ris¬ 
ing Star and Rutkowski's obsession 
with proving that you can write good, 
fast, compact, usable software in 
FORTH. Epson's loyalty to Rising Star 
is touching. 1 guess they can afford it. 

More Orchids 

Last month I reviewed Orchid Tech¬ 
nology's PCturbo 186 board ("Orchids 


344 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 





CHAOS MANOR 


to You,” page 363), which speeds up 
your IBM PC something wonderful. 
We've been running it for nearly two 
months now: no glitches, no prob¬ 
lems, and it's fast, FAST, FAST. 

The Orchid board uses its own on¬ 
board memory, allowing the original 
memory in your PC to become one 
or more RAM disks. Last month there 
was a problem: the Orchid manuals 
weren't clear enough on how to install 
the RAM disks. 

That's been fixed. Orchid now has 
an Options program that runs fine 
and lets you configure your PC in a 
number of ways, allocating memory 
to I/O (input/output) buffers, RAM 
disks, etc. The version sent to me still 
had documentation problems; but 
after my phone call to get Orchid's 
people to walk me through it, they 
once more rewrote the instructions, 
and I don't think you'll have trouble 
with them now. 


I'm very impressed with the Orchid 
PCturbo 186. 

So That s It ... 

I've often wondered why there's no 
hardware reset key on the IBM PC. 
(There isn't one on the PC AT either.) 
The lack of such a key can be pretty 
serious, as for instance when your 
machine locks up and won't listen to 
the keyboard at all, and you have to 
turn it off to get it going again. This 
is not good for hard disks. It isn't par¬ 
ticularly good for power supplies, 
either. 

Deep Blue, my source inside IBM, 
has told me why there's no hardware 
reset: Microsoft didn't want IBM to 
put one on. It seems that if you can 
reset the machine it's easier to pirate 
software. IBM, for reasons not known 
to my source, went along with this 
nonsense. It didn't even put a hard¬ 
ware reset on the AT. 


Of course, all the IBM people at 
Boca Raton use an expensive hard¬ 
ware addition called PC Trace that 
contains, among other things, a hard¬ 
ware reset. That's a pretty costly way 
out. 

Fortunately, there's a less expensive 
remedy. Security Microsystems, the 
manufacturer of Quickon, the nifty 
little switch that lets you dispense with 
the PC's memory test on power-on, 
now makes PC Reset, a combination 
gadget that will disable the memory 
test and also do a hardware reset. 
There's a version for the PC and 
another for the PC XT; so far none for 
the AT, although I wouldn't be sur¬ 
prised if one is in the works. 

I've had Security's memory-disabler 
in Lucy Van Pelt, our fussbudget PC, 
for eight or nine months now with no 
problems. When we were installing 
the reset switch, we brought up the 

( continued ) 


r 

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Inquiry 257 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 345 





























CHAOS MANOR 


PC with the memory test. We'd forgot¬ 
ten how long that takes: 90 seconds, 
if you have your system chock-full of 
memory. That’s a long time. 

We've just put in the reset switch 
system. It works: push the button and 
it forces reset. To install it, you have 
to cut one power wire: Security Micro¬ 
systems thoughtfully includes a gizmo 


to reconnect the wire if you ever 
decide to remove the switch. The kit 
also includes an IC (integrated circuit) 
puller. Interestingly enough, it works 
with the PCturbo 186 board installed; 
I don't know whether or not it forces 
the 186 to reset. That board has its 
own hardware reset button on the 
back, and if I ever lock up the 186, I’ll 


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probably use both reset buttons just 
to be sure. 

With an S-100 system, the contents 
of a RAM disk will survive a reset; at 
least they do with my CompuPro, 
which won't reformat a RAM disk 
that's already formatted. Alas, the Or¬ 
chid PCturbo 186 RAM-disk files do 
not survive resetting the PC. whether 
that's done by the Security Microsys¬ 
tems button or by Ctrl-Alt-Del. I 
suspect that's a function of the Orchid 
Software, but it may be inherent in the 
way Security Microsystems forces 
system reset. 

The Security Microsystems reset 
comes out the back of the machine 
to a big button reminiscent of the 
pickle switch on the old Norden 
bombsight. The company has 
thoughtfully included some sticky- 
back Velcro so that you can attach the 
button to the side of your PC at any 
convenient place. Alas, the Orchid 
PCturbo 186 button remains on the 
back where it's hard to get at. 

Anyway, you can now have hard¬ 
ware reset for your PC; gee, if this 
keeps up. the machine will have most 
of the features the Altair did. 

PC AT Rumors 

Knowledgeable sources are ordering 
their PC AT for delivery in six to nine 
months; it seems there are some hairy 
power-supply problems on many of 
the Aft recently delivered. This comes 
from a company that orders IBM PC 
equipment by the pallet load. 

Deep Blue tells me there are about 
80,000 PC Aft sitting in warehouses 
waiting for Intel to deliver 80286 
chips. The production yields on those 
chips are much lower than expected. 
There's also some concern that the 
power supplies in many of those 
warehoused machines will have to be 
replaced or at least reworked. By the 
time you read this, you can be sure 
that IBM will have done something 
about the problem. Big Blue does not 
intend to ship equipment that 
frustrates users. 

I've further information on the AT 
according to a friend in an indepen¬ 
dent laboratory, the AT is set up for 

( continued ) 

* 9 — Inquiry 185 


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Press 
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Type Outline | (or 


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and press the Return key. 

The outline is titled. 

Press the grey + key. 
You move to heading 
1 . 0 . 

Type 


Main Point 1 


then press the 
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1.0 is titled. 


! 


Press the (down) 
arrow key. You’ve 


Ctrl 


together, then the E key. 

A new heading is inserted 
under 1.1. 


Ctrl 


Press Ctrl and 
the grey + key. 

A subhead is added to the 
heading you just created. 
(Under any of these heads or 
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text, creating spreadsheets, 
generating graphics, etc.) 


Ctrl 


Press the 
Ctrl and 
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together, then the S key. 

A spreadsheet frame is cre¬ 
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Press the F9 key. 
There’s the spread¬ 
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F9 


full screen. 


F9 


Ctrl 


Press F9 again. 

Back to the outline. 

Press the 
Ctrl and 
Dkeys 


moved to subhead 1.1. 

Press the 
Ctrl and 
Ckeys 


together, then the C key. 

Your desktop is cleaned up. 

Now, how’s that for a power 
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We’ll put you in control. 


Inquiry 25 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 349 




























































































































Subscription 

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CHAOS MANOR 


multiprocessing—there are signals on 
the extra bus for it. (The "extra bus” 
is another strip of connectors that 
make the AT’s bus 16 bits wide.) The 
extra bus seems to run all of the cur¬ 
rent PC cards just fine but also will run 
"wider" cards. 

Another thing: the AT's crystal is 
socketed, just as if IBM were planning 
for faster 80286s already. 

Synchronicity 

Talking with |im Baen reminds me that 
he has a new software line. It includes 
a number of games, many based on 
the works of authors he's published— 
the most notable is Fred Saberhagen's 
Berserker series, and of course I'll 
finish the game based on Niven and 
Pournelle's \nferno Real Soon Now. I've 
mentioned Baen's Magic Keyboard 
several times before. 

There's also The Electric Dragon. 

The / Cfiing or Book of Changes has 
been around a long time: Confucius 
thought it was old at the time of 
Christ. It is supposed to have been 
composed about the time of the Tro- 
jan War. Scholars including Confucius 
and lung have thought it worth a great 
deal of study. Many science-fiction 
readers first heard of it through the 
late Philip K. Dick's masterful T he Man 
in the High Castle , which, according to 
Dick, was largely written through the 
aid of the oracle. 

One uses the 1 Ching by tossing joss 
sticks to generate random numbers. 
The theory is that all events in the 
universe are connected, and thus the 
study of any event will lead to under¬ 
standing of events (and total situa¬ 
tions) existing simultaneously; and 
thus the total pattern of the universe 
will be brought to bear on the fall of 
the yarrow stalks. 

You can also generate the / Ching 
hexagrams by tossing coins: Chinese 
coins were supposed to be preferable, 
but I used to use silver dollars. 
Whatever method you use generates 
a hexagram of six lines. Each possi¬ 
ble hexagram has a name and con¬ 
siderable text concerning it. Study of 
that text is supposed to give you sage 
advice on what to do at this particular 
moment. 


Modern science, particularly the 
general theory of relativity, holds that 
the concept of simultaneity is mean¬ 
ingless; and it isn't necessary to 
believe in the theory of the / Ching to 
be fascinated with it. You can also 
believe that its author was a very 
astute judge of human nature and 
wrote a number of mind-concentrat¬ 
ing passages designed to focus an in¬ 
dividual’s powers of thought. 

In any event, the standard way to 
consult the / Ching involves hand 
washing, lighting incense, taking the 
book down from a high shelf, and un¬ 
wrapping it from its silk cover with 
great respect; laying it on a south¬ 
facing table in the middle of the room; 
and, after suitably composing one's 
mind, tossing the yarrow stalks in a 
precisely defined manner. 

With The Electric Dragon you mere¬ 
ly put a floppy disk into an IBM PC 
and type ICHING <return>. The 
system will prompt you from there. 
The manual tells you that you may, if 
you like, treat your floppy disk with 
the proper reverence, place your com¬ 
puter facing south on a table in the 
middle of the room, and use incense. 
Somehow it's not quite the same. 

However, the program does all that 
the yarrow stalks could do. Instead of 
tossing the sticks (or coins), you press 
any key whenever you feel that the 
time is propitious; this generates one 
line of the six-line I Ching hexagram. 
Lines are either yin or yang and can 
be either fixed or moving; if any of the 
lines is a "moving line" (the odds are 
good that at least one will be), you 
have actually generated two hexa¬ 
grams, and their meaning, modified 
by the meaning of the moving line or 
lines, must also be considered. The 
odds for generating each kind of line 
(as generated by tossing yarrow stalks) 
are easily calculated; one supposes 
that The Electric Dragon program 
duplicates those odds as closely as 
possible. 

The manual was written by Steve 
Rasnic Tern. I've not read a lot of his 
poetry, but I have twice included 
poems by Tern in anthologies I've 
edited. The / Ching implemented in the 

( continued ) 


350 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 236 














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CHAOS MANOR 


program is the 1950 Richard Wilhelm 
translation rendered into English by 
Cary F. Baynes from Princeton Univer¬ 
sity Press. I'm no authority on ver¬ 
sions of the I Ching; 1 assume this is 
a good one mostly because I've 
known lim Baen a long time, and he's 
always pretty careful to do things 
right—and I also know he's been in¬ 
trigued by the I Ching for many years. 
Certainly the messages read poeti¬ 
cally—and enigmatically—enough. 

The Electric Dragon program con¬ 
tains what amounts to a log book. You 
can type in your question, and after 
receiving an answer from the oracle, 
type in a comment; after which you 
can save the whole thing. The file is 
time- and date-stamped, so that it can 
become a kind of diary of your prob¬ 
lems and your thoughts about them. 
Alas, I've found no way to make hard 
copy to paste into my regular log 
book. 

You can also review previous ses¬ 
sions or study an individual hexa¬ 
gram. 

If you've ever wondered about the 
I Ching. this is a reasonably painless 
way to consult it. At worst, it's an ex¬ 
pensive electronic log book. 

Small Disks! 

Everyone has moved to 5 '4-inch disks; 
everyone, that is, except me. Eight- 
inch disks are still the main work¬ 
horses here at Chaos Manor. The 
CompuPro 8-inch double-sided for¬ 
mat holds 1.1 megabytes per disk: 
that's 180,000 English words, more 
than enough for a novel. 1 can copy 
all that in about two minutes flat. It's 
easy to keep lots of backup copies. 
Eight-inch drives are much faster than 
514 and significantly more reliable; I 
almost never get "retry" errors on the 
8-inch drives, and there's at least one 
a week with 54. 

However, most software now comes 
on the small disks, and it's a pain to 
have to get Peter to use the Disk 
Maker 1 to transfer it over to 8-inch 
format so that 1 can get it into the 
Golem, my big CompuPro 8/16 sys¬ 
tem. For some time now I've been 
promised small disks for the Golem; 
when the CompuPro hard disk ar¬ 


rived, it had a blank spot with a piece 
of yellow stick-on saying "54 drive 
goes here"; but nothing happened. 

Last week that got fixed. CompuPro 
sent down a big box that contained 
a new power supply and two Mit¬ 
subishi 96-tpi (tracks per inch) 5 4-inch 
drives. There was also a CompuPro 
Disk One-A controller that will handle 
both the 54-inch and 8-inch drives. 

We took the hard disk out of the old 
box and put it in the new; the old 
power-supply box went back up to 
Hayward, where CompuPro intends to 
take it apart to see how it has held up 
under nearly a year of intense use. 
Then Tony Pietsch came over to set 
things up. In the course of the installa¬ 
tion, we discovered one mode of 
board failure that the CompuPro 
quality-assurance people hadn't 
tested for. A quick phone call took 
care of that: they've now changed 
their test procedure. 

One of the main reasons I get so 
much attention from the people at 
CompuPro is that nearly everything 
they put out gets set up and used 
here before it gets to the public; and 
I often find problems that did not 
show up in other tests, precisely 
because I do not "test" equipment 
and software. I use it; and since we do 
almost everything here, from writing 
books to running accounting software 
to writing programs, it gets "tested" 
a great deal more thoroughly than 
most test sites can manage. 

I generally find some problems. 
That's why I have more than one com¬ 
puter, including one I don't touch: 
when we get a problem with the ex¬ 
perimental system, I leave it alone un¬ 
til Tbny can look at it. He finds the 
problem, consults with CompuPro, 
and they modify the design, change 
software, or do what it takes to make 
things work properly. 

The result can be impressive. Thke 
the Golem as an example. He's often 
torn apart and filled with experimen¬ 
tal equipment. We work him hard. Yet 
he hasn't been off duty for two weeks 
cumulatively in the more than two 
years we've had him. 

Anyway, the board glitch was fixed, 
as was a minor software problem; and 


1 can now run my 54-inch drives as 
well as 8-inch. They run under Tony's 
Newmedia program. Newmedia tells 
your system that any one of about 40 
different disk formats (he's adding to 
them all the time) is native. Once that's 
done, you can read, write to, and for¬ 
mat 54-inch disks in the format you 
chose. Possible formats include both 
48- and 96-tpi, IBM, Epson, Kaypro, 
and a whole bunch of others. 

Changing native formats with New¬ 
media takes about 30 seconds, after 
which you can use COPY or PIP to 
move files to the new format from the 
hard disk, 8-inch drive, or RAM disk. 
Like all of Tbny's recent programs, it 
contains its own instructions: type 
NEWMEDIA ? <return > and it tells 
you all you want to know about using 
it. Newmedia with the CompuPro Disk 
One-A is going to save Peter and the 
Disk Maker I a lot of work. Incidental¬ 
ly, all of Tony Pietsch's software uses 
that convention: type the program 
name, space, and a question mark 
and the program explains itself. Nifty. 

Tony also brought the new very fast 
Copy and Format programs that cut 
disk-copy time in about half. 

My system was installed by Tbny; 
but CompuPro has been working on 
making its stuff easier to get running, 
and installation of the new BIOS (basic 
input/output system) software can 
now be accomplished by running a 
single Submit file, which assembles 
the BIOS (you get the source code) 
and does the system installation. 
Pournelle's law still obtains though: if 
you don't know what you're doing, 
deal with people who do. In Compu- 
Pro's case, that translates to "work 
with Systems Centers unless you're 
pretty familiar with S-100 bus sys¬ 
tems." 

That Video Board 
and the SPUZ 

Tony also brought over a copy of the 
new CompuPro PC-compatible S-100 
video board. Alas, he couldn't leave 
it; as of now there are only five of 
them in existence. CompuPro is mak¬ 
ing more next week, and I ought to 
have mine Real Soon Now. I can hard- 

( continued ) 


352 B Y T E • FEBRUARY 1985 





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Inquiry 347 






















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Inquiry 235 


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Inquiry 259 


CHAOS MANOR 


ly wait. When I get that in. we'll 
change my 8/16 over to Concurrent 
DOS, replacing the CompuPro 8/16 
processor board with the new 80286 
microprocessor and one or more 
SPUZes. 

SPUZ is CompuPro's code name for 
a concurrent Z80 board, which is 
already running in test sites, including 
at Tony's house. Once Tony is happy, 
it's my turn. I'm eager to get at it. 
When it's all done, there will be no 
more Switch! and Swap programs; if 
the machine's fed a Z80 program, it 
will run that simultaneously with 
16-bit 80286 programs. Bill Godbout 
says it's like having a box full of com¬ 
puters; turn 'em loose and let 'em all 
play together, each one running at its 
own speed 

CompuPro also has a new version 
of Shirley, otherwise known as the 
CompuPro 10 multiuser system. The 
new one will fly with Concurrent DOS. 
Owners of the older machines will be 
able to upgrade through local Sys¬ 
tems Centers. 

UNIX? 

I've not changed my views on UNIX: 
on Mondays and Wednesdays I'm 
convinced it's going to sweep through 
the computer world like wildfire and 
be the unifying influence we all need. 
After all. Digital Research is supposed 
to be working on ways to make Con- 


Pro also has UNIX System V for the 
80286 chip. It shouldn't take the com¬ 
pany all that long to bring UNIX into 
the United States. 

Flowcharts 

Mrs. Pournelle is doing a book plus 
computer program that will allow any 
child with access to a computer to 
learn to read. She can do that 
because she has for years been the 
reading teacher of last resort for the 
Los Angeles County juvenile justice 
system. Her students are teenage il¬ 
literates in a lockup. They mostly 
come with pound after pound of 
psychological mumbo jumbo that 
"proves” the kid can't possibly learn 
to read; it wasn't the school system's 
fault. 

She ignores that junk and teaches 
the kids to read. She hasn't failed yet. 

Now she’s doing a book on 
methods. With the book will come a 
computer program. Alex and I are 
working on it. Her contract specifies 
that part of the advance will be paid 
when we turn in a flowchart of the 
computer program. By coincidence, 
we got that contract the same day 
that Flow Charting, a program by 
Patton and Patton, arrived. 

This looks as if it would be an easy 
system for producing flowcharts; 
heaven knows I’d like to use 
som ething like that, because modify- 


current DOS run under UNIX; and ing and redrawing flowcharts is one of 


since PC-DOS runs under Concurrent 
DOS, that will go a long way toward 
integrating the micro world into one 
happy family. 

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I recall 
that UNIX is enormous, too big and 
too slow, changes all the time, and 
generally requires a UNIX wizard to 
maintain; there's no way it's going to 
be popular outside large computer 
establishments. Give vanilla UNIX to 
business users and hear the screams 
of agony. 

For those interested, though, these 
rumors out of CompuPro: the Euro- 
pean branch of the firm has shipped 
a beta-test version of UNIX for the 


the more boring ways to spend time. 

Alas. Flow Charting is copy-pro¬ 
tected. The manual says a backup 
copy of the program is provided, but 
there's none in my package. 

I'm not about to waste my time de¬ 
signing flowcharts that can then be ac¬ 
cessed only by use of an off-brand 
disk that I can't make backups of. For 
that matter, I don't much like using 
programs I can't put on a RAM disk. 
Looks as if Flow Charting goes off in¬ 
to the same corner as the other stuff 
I'll get to when things are slack. 

Free Filer 

£>ne of Peter Flynn's jobs is compil- 


68000 chip to - CompuPro Can a d a . — ing th e It e ms D is cu ssed box. This can 


This is supposed to be the full 
Berkeley UNIX plus System V. Compu- 


be a pretty tedious job. He has recent- 

( continued) 






















CHAOS MANOR 


Items Discussed 


CompuPro Disk One-A (5'A) . . $695 

Newmedia .Not Available 

SPUZ.$695 

UNIX 68000 .Not Available 

CompuPro 

3 506 Breakwater Court 
Hayward. CA 94545 
(415) 786-0909 

Flow Charting.$167 

Patton and Patton 
340 Lassenpark Circle 
San lose. CA 95136 
(408) 629-5044 

Free Filer .Not Available 

Tfelion Software 
POB 1464 

La Mirada. CA 90637-1464 

PC AT.$6694 

IBM Entry Systems Division 
POB 1328 

Boca Raton, FL 33432 
(800) 447-4700 

PC Reset Package (includes 

Quickon).$89.95 

Security Microsystems Consultants 
16 Flagg Place. Suite 102 
Staten Island. NY 10304 
(212) 667-1019 


PCturbo 186 


128K bytes.$1095 

2 56K bytes.$1245 


Orchid Technology 
47790 Westinghouse Dr. 
Fremont, CA 94539 
(415) 490-8586 

SemiDisk (for the Epson QX-10) 


512K bytes.$799 

2 megabytes.$2499 


SemiDisk Systems 
POB GG 

Beaverton. OR 97075 
(503) 642-3100 

The Electric Dragon .. disk $34.95 
Baen Enterprises 
8 West 36th St. 

New York. NY 10018 

(212) 947-8244 

Valdocs 2.0.less than $50 

Rising Star Industries 
24050 Madison St., Suite 113 
Torrance. CA 90505 

(213) 378-9861 


ly found an excellent CP/M program 
that makes it considerably easier. 

Free Filer from Tfelion Software was 
designed to work with WordStar files, 
but it works fine with WRITE text files, 
too. Free Filer is a "free form informa¬ 
tion retrieval system" that will let you 
keep card files, search through them 
on single or multiple keys, and make 
sorted files of the kind you see in the 
Items Discussed box. 

His example: suppose you had the 
following card entries: 

—Cats 

furry, sneaky, warm, smart, small, ed¬ 
ible (although eating them is not 
socially acceptable), semidomesti- 
cated, cheap to expensive 

—Sheep 

wooly, medium-sized, warm, edible, 
domesticated, expensive 

—Toads 

small, wet, cold, beautiful [it's Peter's 
file, not mine|, inedible |as far as I'm 
concerned], cheap 

Free Filer could be used to search 
for all animals that are small (toads 
and cats) or warm and expensive (cats 
and sheep) or cheap and edible (cats). 
Each time a record is found that con¬ 
tains the word or words searched for, 
it is displayed by itself on the screen. 
You then have the option to print it 
or add it to the search file. 

There are a number of ways to sort 
your data once you retrieve it. 

The program is not copy-protected 
and indeed urges you to make a 
backup copy before using it. It can be 
run from within WordStar as an infor¬ 
mation utility to generate specialized 
files that can then be included in the 
text you're working on. 

The instructions are simple, in 
English, and easy to use. There are 
plenty of examples. Free Filer is one 
of those wonderful little general- 
purpose text utilities that simplify life 
with computers. 

Recommended. 

Winding Down 

Tbny just called. He’s got a CompuPro 
80286 board and SPUZ intended for 
me: first they go into his system for 


checkout. COMDEX is coming up in 
two weeks: just after that I ought to 
have the new stuff aboard. 

I could say the book of the month 
was mine: certainly that was the book 
I put the most time and effort into. 
However, the real book of the month 
is The World of Digital typesetting by John 
W. Seybold (1984; Seybold Publica¬ 
tions, POB 644, Media. PA 19063; no 
price shown). This book will tell you 
a lot about typesetting equipment, 
software, and interfaces. It is not com¬ 
plete. There's more to the story; but 
this is a good introduction and history. 
Like Skillin and Gay's Words Into Print, 
Seybold's book belongs on the refer¬ 
ence shelf of any serious professional 
writer. It's not easy reading, but it's 
stuff that professional wordsmiths had 
better know. 

There hasn't been enough time for 
games, so there is no game of the 


month. However, 1 have been pro¬ 
moted to Vice Admiral in the Cygnus 
Star Fleet I game. 

We've ordered 512K-byte upgrades 
for our Macintosh computers, but 
they haven't come yet. Our dealer 
says Real Soon Now. 

Finally, I just got a call from AT&T, 
and it looks as if I'm going to get one 
of the UNIX-running 3B2 systems to 
play with; hopefully, in a couple of 
months I'll know what to think about 
UNIX on Fridays and weekends. ■ 


terry Pournelle welcomes readers' com¬ 
ments and opinions. Send a self- 
addressed, stamped envelope to terry 
Pournelle, do BYTE Publications, POB 
372. Hancock, NH 03449. P lease put 
your address on the letter as well as on 
the envelope. Due to the high volume of 
letters, terry cannot guarantee a personal 
reply. 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 355 






















TOGETHER, 
STOPPING □ 


356 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 





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Inquiry 209 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 357 










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35t BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


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CHAOS MANOR MAIL 


Corvus Problems 


Dear Jerry, 

I was very interested to see your com¬ 
ments on the Corvus hard disk. We've 
been using one for almost two years. Our 
experience has been frustrating, different 
enough from yours, and. I hope, relevant 
to enough people that you might decide 
to look into it further. 

After researching hard disks for several 
months, our ultimate reason for going with 
Corvus was that the finance company we 
use for our computer deals said it was the 
only brand it wanted to finance because 
it was the only one with a reasonable ser¬ 
vice record. After five firmware and hard¬ 
ware crashes. I wish I knew then what I 
know now. 

More distressing than having to baby the 
beast has been the response of Corvus 
itself. Our first crash was due to a bug in 
Corvus's firmware. I got on the phone with 
Corvus's technical people, who told me 
they knew about the problem and how to 
fix it. The strange part was that they also 
told me they hadn’t bothered to notify 
dealers or users about the problem. Cor¬ 
vus has also failed to answer my letters 
asking to buy documentation (including a 
manual for multiusers, which an insert in 
the original users manual two years ago 
promised would be mailed to me Real 
Soon Now). 

Among our other problems was a 
burned-out main drive bearing, which, 
luckily, failed just before the warranty ran 
out. There was one service technician in 
all of Colorado who seemed to know 
something about the drive, but his shop 
went under, and the new local Corvus con¬ 
tact told me they're not interested in 
spending much time with them unless 
we're ready to spend big bucks on more 
hardware. They did tell us all our problems 
were because the Rev B was a lousy prod¬ 
uct. and if we'd just junk it and buy all the 
latest Corvus stuff, our problems would 
go away. 

My computer responsibilities are with a 
small business, using Apples and wanting 
to get bigger. But it's the old story of hav¬ 
ing to live with an investment after so 
many bucks went into it. We'd like to get 
a real network in here and more disk 


space, but I'm sure not going to trust 
Omninet after our experiences with our 
first Corvus product. I've done a fair 
amount of documentation myself, have 
the thing interfaced with ProDOS now. and 
managed to get around some of the limits 
Corvus built into the thing when it imple¬ 
mented it under DOS 3.3. 

I thought you might be interested. I en¬ 
joy reading you. even when I disagree with 
you. 

Glenn Holliday 
Denver CO 

Alas , Rev B was a dog, as was Rev A. 
Corvus has got most of its problems fixed 
now, or so I am told. The one we have 
is scheduled for a pack of revisions; I'll 
do a full report when it's done. 

I do wish Corvus well. The company 
has some good troops and good ideas, 
and its people are trying hard: unlike 
most of their competitors, they 're trying 
to network everything, not just the big¬ 
gies. We hear good things about their 
networks.— Jerry 

NEC PG-8201A 


Dear Jerry, 

Recently I purchased an NEC PC-8201 A 
lap-size portable computer, partly 
because you had nice things to say about 
it and partly because I couldn't resist the 
sale price. In general. I've been quite 
pleased with it (although I'll need to add 
more memory before I'll be really happy). 
I also own a Kaypro 2. and 1 have been 
using Mycroft Labs' MITE communications 
package along with the Telcom program 
in the NEC to transmit text files between 
the two. However, according to the way I 
read the NEC manuals, it should be possi¬ 
ble to use the NEC SAVE < filename > as 
COM: command to transmit files from the 
NEC through the RS-232C port to the 
Kaypro. This feature would be potentially 
useful in saving BASIC programs from the 
NEC to the Kaypro's disk drives. The useful 
feature is that the NEC tries to convert a 
BASIC file (.BA) from internal format to 
ASCII format as it transmits. Thus, using 
the SAVE command would prevent you 
from having to first save a BASIC program 
in ASCII format on the NEC and then call¬ 


ing up Tblcom to send it to the Kaypro. 

Unfortunately, the SAVE command does 
not work very well in my setup. I have both 
computers set to agree on communica¬ 
tions protocol and whatnot, but when I 
save a text file to the RS-232C port on the 
NEC. the Kaypro gets only about half a 
screen and then gets hung up. When I try 
this procedure with a .BA file, the same 
thing happens, but the Kaypro drops a few 
characters as well (notably line numbers). 
This seems to happen regardless of how 
low I set the transmission rate. I was 
wondering if you have tried the NEC SAVE 
command to send things out the commu¬ 
nications port to a Kaypro or other 
computer. 

The NEC Telcom program has worked 
fine for my setup (as long as one is aware 
that because of the Kaypro’s software 
screen scrolling, any communication that 
echoes to the screen has to be no faster 
than 1200 bps for the scrolling to keep up 
and no characters to be lost). At any rate. 
I would like to hear about any experience 
you have had with the SAVE command. 
Thanks. 

Mark E. Cornell 
TUcson, AZ 

I’ve never used the SAVE command. In¬ 
deed. I only use Percy, my NEC 
PC-8201A. as a lapboard typewriter 
when I'm on aircraft. When I get to my 
hotel, I use Telcom and the PIP command 
to send the resulting text to Adeline, my 
Otrona Attache; or when I get home, I 
use Telcom to send the text to my Com- 
puPro 8/16. Both work perfectly at 9600 
bps. 

I’ve tried this with the Kaypro 10 and 
it all works fine at 9600 bps; just don’t 
echo to the screen. Use PIP to collect the 
files onto the Kaypro. Alas. I think you 
have no choice but to save your pro¬ 
grams in ASCII and use Telcom. 

I still like Percy a lot. So does Mrs. 
Pournelle.— Jerry 

Copy Protection 


Dear Jerry. 

I can empathize with your gripes about 
copy-protected source disks. I had such a 

( continued ) 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 359 








CHAOS MANOR MAIL 


utility disk self-destruct on me six months 
ago. I have no children or animals under¬ 
foot and am reasonably fastidious about 
disk care. Even with the best-laid plans, 
part of the copy-protection scheme is an 
(usually abortive) attempt to reformat the 
disk. Fair enough, except when the switch 
on your drive slips slightly and the under¬ 
side of the write-protect flap caves in just 
enough, leaving you with a rather expen¬ 
sive blank disk. In defense of the manu¬ 
facturer, the program is very reasonably 
priced, does exactly what it claims, and 
one backup disk is available to registered 
owners at a reduced price. I was still rather 
miffed at having my disk destroyed 
through no real fault of my own. 

The distributor was no help (buy the 
backup—but what if that one goes?). I 
began snooping around in my DOS and 
discovered the nature of the copy protec¬ 
tion, where certain information is returned 
to the DOS buffers with certain types of 
read errors. I then wrote a couple of 
utilities to read and write these irregular 
formats track by track. 1 now have backups 
for my own use that in a better world I 
should have had in the first place. I'm no 
real pirating threat, since 1 don't know 
anyone who can use this program who 
doesn't have it already (an essential part 
of my system is no longer manufactured), 
yet these copies are not entirely on the 
up-and-up (maybe one, since I paid for 
one). Serial numbers are a good idea, but 
the numbers on this package are not hid¬ 
den very well even though the code itself 
is gibberish. 

I don't know if an equitable and sensi¬ 
ble solution is on the horizon, just look 
at what a mess "fair use" turned out to 
be when certain publishers decided to 
play hardball with photocopying. Inflating 
software costs to anticipate piracy could 
easily price some packages out of the 
market. Improved copy protection is just 
more of a challenge in the escalating war 
of copy-protection/subversion schemes. I 
agree that cheap, reliable software usual¬ 
ly isn’t worth trying to steal, but I don't 
think we’ll be flooded with exemplars any¬ 
time soon. 

Lawrence L. Crawford 
Philadelphia. PA 

Another good letter on copy protec¬ 
tion. The issue is not going away— jerry 

The Users Strike Back 


Dear Jerry, 

The time has come for the computer 
users of the world to unite and to make 


the following declaration to the software 
suppliers of the world. 

Dear Software Supplier/Copy Protector: 

I understand that you perceive the un¬ 
authorized and illegal copying of your 
software to be a huge and critical prob¬ 
lem. There are many people who criticize 
your position and logic, but that is neither 
here nor there. To you, this copying is seen 
as a problem, and I doubt that any argu¬ 
ments or evidence will change your mind. 
So I am not writing you about piracy, its 
economic effects, or any of this. Instead. 

I ask you to consider for a moment the 
forgotten person in this debate, the or¬ 
dinary user. 

The means you have chosen to solve 
this problem of illegal copying, copy pro¬ 
tection, are completely inappropriate from 
the viewpoint of the user of your software. 
You should be able to recognize this with¬ 
out long and tedious argument; you 
should be able to recognize that you owe 
everything to the user, that you owe to the 
user the duty of utmost care, that you are 
a trustee of the user's information needs. 
You should, in short, be able to recognize 
the tremendous responsibility you have 
toward the user. 

But you don't. Instead, you treat the user 
with the utmost contempt and disrespect. 
You deliver unintelligible manuals, full of 
jargon and convoluted syntax, when you 
should be trying desperately to commu¬ 
nicate clearly. You disclaim all legal 
responsibility for the correctness of your 
software; you spend millions in advertis¬ 
ing and then refuse to even commit your¬ 
self to the proper working of your product. 

But you show your greatest contempt by 
instituting copy-protection schemes, which 
create new clangers for those who have 
so foolishly placed their trust in your abili¬ 
ty to help them. No copy-protection 
scheme will ever help any user, and usual¬ 
ly the scheme will only serve to injure and 
frustrate the user. Are the concepts of 
pride and professionalism really so foreign 
to you? 

Maybe you are protected by these 
schemes; but they serve me poorly. Can't 
you see that your duty is to me, your 
customer, instead of to your perception 
of your own injury? You can't balance the 
perceived cost to yourself against the in¬ 
jury to me and then say your interest is 
the greater and should prevail; you are 
morally responsible to consider and pro¬ 
tect my own information welfare, and I de¬ 
mand that you attend to this duty. 

Maybe your product is truly wonderful, 
but I am not interested in any copy¬ 


protected software, no matter how won¬ 
derful. I can see that your only interest is 
what you can get from me and not what 
you can do for me. So I will avoid your 
product. I will not buy it, so you will not 
have my money. More important. I will not 
use it, so you will not have my trust and 
respect; for these are what I give when I 
use a piece of software. Needless to say, 

1 will not waste my time trying to copy a 
piece of software that 1 am committed not 
to use. I will advise everyone I know to do 
the same. I will choose my software ven¬ 
dors as I do my friends, my physician, and 
my attorney. And I will hold you in the 
same contempt as you. perhaps unknow¬ 
ingly. hold me. 

Should you learn to temper your greed 
with wisdom. let me know. I’m always 
ready to make a new friend. 

Sincerely. 

Software User 

Boycott is the only effective answer to 
this problem. The vendors will somehow 
have to be coerced into being fair and 
reasonable, since they have no inclination 
to take this step on their own. 

Edmund B. Burke 
Atlanta. GA 

Maybe yours is the only way Alas , com¬ 
puter users are not all that well or¬ 
ganized. Still, a few thousand such let¬ 
ters. . .—Jerry 

A Fantasy? 


Dear Jerry, 

A while back, I was part of a commer¬ 
cial programming effort. The question of 
copy protection came up. We came to the 
following conclusions: 

If customers cannot back it up, then: 
We would have to maintain full 
customer records; We would have 
a higher number of disks returned 
because the disk needed very ac¬ 
curate drive-speed adjustment; It 
would involve another entire job/ 
position/department; It would have 
to be a nonprofit endeavor. 

All locks can be picked; 

The only people we had to stop 
could copy and sell it anyway; If 
they give away only one to three 
copies, we still have a large number 
of paying cUents (free advertising, 
too!). 

We would either have to: 

Write the lock ourselves (time=$); 
Hire someone to write it (ditto); Pay 
( continued ) 


360 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 








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and SYLK.™ 

Lots of graphics. 

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So Statpro lets you create graphics 
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Ashton-Tate. DIF is a trademark of Software Arts, 
Inc. 1-2-3 is a trademark of Lotus Development Cor¬ 
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FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 361 



Statpro exchanges 
data with many 
popular programs. 




Colorful graphics make complex 
data easy to understand. 













CHAOS MANOR MAIL 


a higher duplication cost. 

We would find ourselves with a large 
custom-programming job: 

Patches to fit/use all printers; 
Patches for all 80-column (Apple) 
cards; Patches for several disk oper¬ 
ating systems. 

The market would be more than halved 
because it would not fit many specific 
systems (hardware). 

The market would be reduced further 
because it could not fit into a menu- 
driven. userproof. black box with 
many functions. 

It would please the programmer 
because no one would see the faults. 
But then he had already been paid. 

I would not have bought it because I 
think programs should be unlocked; 
people lend/borrow your books don't 
they? 

At this point we ended the discussion 
and sold it unprotected. 

William M. Reed 
New Orleans, LA 

I wish all the publishers would come to 
the same conclusion.— Jerry 

Ethics 


Dear Jerry, 

Re your September 1984 column on 
Tom Ttimpidis and his RCBS being busted 
at the behest of one of Ma Bell's offspring: 

Of course, it's always the little guy who 
gets hung out to dry. This same sort of 
stuff must certainly go on (even if only on 
a one-on-one basis) via CompuServe and 
The Source. Can you imagine how many 
lawyers the Reader's Digest. Control Data 
Corp., and H & R Block would have bar¬ 
ring the doorway if a phone company 
tried to impound the computers at their 
two subsidiaries? 

You seemed to think that your super¬ 
market analogy was a bit off-the-wall, but 
if you've ever read the tortured logic and 
mind-boggling conclusions that some 
judges hand down every day. you wouldn't 
be quite so quick to dismiss the idea. Some 
more hypothetical cases: 

The Washington Post runs a car dealer's ad. 
I respond, get bait-and-switched. and buy 
a lemon from him. Can I impound the Post 
presses? What if the Post had received 
previous complaints about the dealer? 
Even if the Post later yanked the ad, the 
damage is done. It seems to me that the 
argument for joint tort-feasance is just as 
strong here as it is in Tcimpidis’s case. 

If I get ripped off by a con-artist adver¬ 


tisement. can I have the magazine's Sec¬ 
ond Class Postage permit yanked? 

Suppose you print in your column 
(notice how we're getting closer and closer 
to home?) my casual comment to you that 
"the Bytecrunch-99 computer stinks,'' 
along with my name and address. Some 
irate Bytecrunch-99 owner firebombs my 
house. Can I send your local sheriff over 
to impound your 32 computers? 

As a "reader service.'' I print your phone 
number in our Eagle users group newslet¬ 
ter, with the suggestion that you can be 
reached between the hours of 2-4 a.m. 
PST. Is your unpublished phone number 
"owned'' by you and/or Ma Bell? 

Regarding your comments (same col¬ 
umn) that electronic bulletin boards 
publish ways to defeat copy-protection 
schemes—there's an obvious connection 
here to the Tcimpidis case. If Tcimpidis is 
guilty of some crime, then what do we do 
about those who publish these other 
hacker goodies? Or are they safe because 
they only published ways to defeat copy¬ 
protection schemes and not the pro¬ 
prietary information itself? 

How ethical is it to hit a buyer for one 
or two weeks' take-home pay for a copy¬ 
protected program? While awaiting a 
replacement for the program disk you ac¬ 
cidentally trashed, you make the next 
VISA payment on a worthless disk and 
loose-leaf binder, the project deadline has 
come and gone, and you've lost bucks, 
grades, or a job. What are the ethics of 
arrogant licensing agreements, hyped 
product descriptions with product dis¬ 
claimers packed inside the box. refusal to 
fix bugs, user nonsupport, and other prob¬ 
lems you've talked about? 

Yes. I read program reviews by the buc¬ 
ketful. My eyes glaze over and skip to the 
next product review as soon as they en¬ 
counter the phrase "copy-protected.'' I ab¬ 
solutely refuse to buy copy-protected pro¬ 
grams. But let's be realistic—what percent¬ 
age of home computer software produced 
today gets a thorough magazine review so 
you can be forewarned? And how many 
interested buyers are going to dig up. say, 
a March 1983 BYTE to see what you said 
about their intended purchase? What 
makes it really bad is that fighting a bat¬ 
tle against copy-protected programs can 
be heartbreaking when you have to pass 
up an otherwise luscious piece of soft¬ 
ware. There's got to be a better way. 

John Mazor 

Clinton, MD 

Yeah. I get so coldly furious about the 
Tcimpidis situation that I'm tempted to 


cry havoc. One thing I note that Pacific 
Telephone has done: by acting as its peo¬ 
ple have, they've opened what ought to 
have been a closed ethical debate, thus 
causing a lot of bright kids to seriously 
consider becoming phone phreaks. 

It is statistically improbable that the 
forbidden phone codes have not been 
sent through The Source and Compu¬ 
Serve: equal justice demands that Ma 
Bell try to confiscate their equipment. 
Perhaps they 're not so eager to take on 
the Reader's Digest? 

As to copy protection: I don't know the 
answer. One of my readers counsels me 
to "let loose the demons ": that is, any 
copy-protection scheme can be defeated, 
usually by a program called a ' demon'' 
that sits in high memory, watches what 
the copy-protection scheme does, and 
then begins to do it. My reader wants me 
to publish the source and installation pro¬ 
cedures for various demons. 

A number of them are already avail¬ 
able on computer bulletin boards. I'm 
thinking what to do — Jerry 

The Truth About Alex 


Dear Jerry, 

A friend of mine and his wife are taking 
a systems course at UCSD. As part of this 
course they develop software in C on the 
UNIX system there. While browsing 
through the system after a long night of 
programming, my friend's wife came 
across an adventure game. As any self- 
respecting hacker would do. she began 
playing the game. At the end of the game, 
after being killed several times, the pro¬ 
gram listed the top ten players. It turns out 
your son has more talents besides the 
business end of computer systems. His 
name was at the top of the list. 

Andrew H. Bushnell 
San Diego, CA 

So that's what he's doing down there! 
I understand the game was Rogue. Alas. 
—Jerry ■ 


Users Group Corner 

Midwest Connection (NEC systems) 
6200 Prince Dr. 

High Ridge. MO 63049 

North Orange County Computer 
Club 

POB 3616 

Orange. CA 92665-0616 


362 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 219 








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In plain English. 

The Maxwell Modems and 
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software, let you do just that 

In fact learning to use them 
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Instead of a manual. 

All the features make sense. 


Like auto-dialing directories. 
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IM The Maxwell Modem and George are trademarks of Racal-Vadic. ‘Internal modems for IBM' PC, XT and compatibles. IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corp.© 1984, Racal-Vadic 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 365 











Viasyn (vV uh sin) n. [L., via , a 
way or road ; Gr., syn, together or 
integrated], formerly CompuPro. 
1. n. a twelve year old manufac¬ 
turer of microprocessor systems, 
subsystems and components, 
notably multi-user computers 
used in business, science and 
industry. 2. adj. related to 
Viasyn, formerly CompuPro, qual¬ 
ity, i.e., possessing extraordi¬ 
nary reliability, performance, 
modularity and ruggedness. See 
CompuPro (previous name). 


V/ASyTl 

3506 Breakwater Court 
Hayward, California 94545 
(800) 367-7816 (Outside California) 
(415) 786-0909 (California) 


366 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Viasyn is a trademark, and CompuPro is a registered trademark, of Viasyn Corporation. 


Inquiry 353 



BYTE JAPAN 




Disfo and Printers 


Important 
peripherals 
from the 1984 
Data Show 

BY WILLIAM M. RAIKE 


William M. Raike. who holds a 
Pfi.D. in applied mathematics from 
Northwestern University, has taught 
operations research and computer 
science in Austin, Texas, and 
Monterey. California. He holds a 
patent on a voice scrambler and was 
formerly an officer of Cryptext 

cw&mm ih uu> miied 5 unus. m 

1980. he went to Japan looking for 
64 K~bit RAMs. He-has been -t h er e 

ever since as a technical translator 
and a software developer. 


T he 1984 Data Show was held from 
September 26 to 29 at the Interna¬ 
tional Trade Center Exhibition Site 
at Harumi, near the Tbkyo waterfront. The 
fastest way to get there is by ferryboat; a 
pleasant 5-minute ride replaces the usual 
15-minute taxi or bus trip through some of 
the least impressive neighborhoods in 
Tbkyo. In this case, the boat trip was one 
of the more interesting events of the after¬ 
noon; the show itself was only so-so in 
terms of noteworthy new computer prod¬ 
ucts. The most important exhibits at this 
show were peripheral devices, especially 
optical disks and laser printers. 

One of the high points of the show was 
Hitachi's OC-301 optical-disk cartridge 
system, which looks like a practical solution 
to on-line storage requirements for large 
databases. You can put 2.6 gigabytes on 
one double-sided disk and still have room 
left over. The disks look like ordinary video¬ 
discs. While a disk spins at 600 rpm (revolu¬ 
tions per minute) within its cartridge, micro¬ 
scopic pits are laser-scanned to read the 
data. Data can also be written in random- 
access mode to any track and any sector 
on the disk. 

According to Hitachi, the maximum data- 
transfer rate is 440K bits per second; this 
limitation is apparently due to the drive 
itself, since the built-in controller/formatter 
is capable of more than twice that rate. The 
disk is organized into over 40,000 tracks per 
side (both single- and double-sided car¬ 
tridges are available), but the average seek 
time is only 200 milliseconds. That means 
that it takes less than Va second, on the 
average, to access any part of a 2.6-gigabyte 
disk, and a single controller can handle up 
to four disks. No information about prices 
of either the cartridges or the optical-disk 
drive was available during the show, but the 
system is now avail able to OEMs (original 
equipment manufacturers). It will probably 
b e adopt e d fir s t by minicomputer vendors, 
but the supermicro market won't be far 
behind. 


Hitachi floppy-disk drives were featured 
earlier in BYTE Japan (see "Show Time,'' 
September 1984, page 407) when I re¬ 
ported on the 9.6-megabyte 8-inch floppy- 
disk drive that was announced at the Tbkyo 
Microcomputer Show. After that announce¬ 
ment. it seemed almost anticlimactic when 
Hitachi displayed its 6.5-megabyte 514-inch 
FDD541 floppy-disk drive at this Data Show. 
Even though the new DK 512 (see photo 1). 
a 171-megabyte 5-inch hard-disk drive, was 
displayed right next to it, the new floppy- 
disk drive stole the show: its data-transfer 
rate is 3 million bits per second. That's more 
than twice as fast as the transfer rates of 
most hard-disk drives and means really fast 
access, even for big files. Right now the 
FDD541 (and the DK 512) are available to 
OEMs, but it won't be long until we see con¬ 
sumer products that use them. 

For people who want something in be¬ 
tween the sizes of the new optical-disk and 
floppy-disk systems. Hitachi also displayed 
a compact 8-inch hard-disk drive. The DK 
815 holds 525 megabytes unformatted (435 
megabytes formatted), and two of them will 
fit into a standard 19-inch equipment rack. 

Printers were very much in the spotlight 
at the show, among them laser printers by 
Canon. Fuji Xerox. Konica, and TEC (TEC 
printers are marketed in the U.S. by the 
C. Itoh trading company.) All four laser 
printers have similar characteristics: they 
print with very high resolution (typically 
about 300 dots per inch), offer a large varie¬ 
ty of character fonts with sharp, magazine- 
quality printing, and have printing speeds 
in the 8- to 10-page-per-minute range. All 
are tabletop machines. Some models have 
RS-232C serial interfaces, while others re¬ 
quire a special video interface. Although no 
prices were available as of this writing, it 
looks as if laser printers will eventually 
become standard for high-quality word¬ 
processing and office applications. 

Laser printers use the same principle as 
an electrostatic copying machine. A drum 

( continued) 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 367 












BYTE JAPAN 


Conventional 


printers are getting 
better and cheaper. 


coated with a material like selenium 
is given a static charge. When light (in 
this case, laser light) touches the 
drum, the drum material becomes 
conductive and the charge leaks away 
from the area exposed to light. A dark 
powder (the toner) charged with the 
same polarity is then applied to the 
drum; since like charges repel, the 
toner adheres only to the parts of the 
drum that were exposed to the light. 
The laser beam itself is extremely nar¬ 
row and is bounced off a multifaceted 
(typically 8 or 12 facets) spinning mir¬ 
ror, so that the beam sweeps across 
the surface of the drum as the mirror 


spins. Regulation of the mirror- 
rotation speed is simplified because 
the beam can be synchronized using 
a simple photodetector arrangement. 
The beam is simply turned on and off 
to form the desired image, much the 
same as the electron gun in a 
cathode-ray-tube screen. No "vertical 
deflection" of the beam is necessary 
because of the rotation of the 
selenium drum. 

The Casio LCD (liquid-crystal dis¬ 
play) shutter printer I mentioned in 
last month's BYTE Japan ("The New 
and the Old," page 429). the 
LCS-2400, uses a similar principle, ex¬ 
cept that the laser and the scanning 
mechanism are replaced by a simpler 
combination of a light source and a 
liquid-crystal shutter to expose the 
image on the drum. Casio has an¬ 
nounced a Japanese price for the 
printer equivalent to $1650. 

Conventional printers, both the dot¬ 


matrix type and the daisy-wheel type, 
are getting better and cheaper. A 
number of 18-dot and 24-dot near- 
letter-quality (or better) printers have 
been on the market for some time, at 
prices ranging from $800 to $1000. 
for both Japanese-language word-pro- 
cessing and graphics applications. 
Now TEC has introduced the Ml 570, 
which prints kanji characters using a 
24-dot font and letter-quality alpha¬ 
numeric characters using an 18-dot 
font. In draft mode it produces near 
letter-quality printing at 200 charac¬ 
ters per second (cps) and has a four- 
color ribbon so that it can produce 
graphics and/or characters in any of 
seven colors. 

Citizen, better known for its elec¬ 
tronic wristwatches, is a newcomer to 
the computer peripheral-equipment 
market. Citizen's new MSP-10K printer 
(see photo 2) is an 18-dot, 21-cps kanji 
printer and near letter-quality alpha- 



Now with over 25 MSDOS formats, 3 V 2 ” formats 
IBM PCAT and word processing format options 


Download fast, read over 200 formats easily, reformat rapidly 


The more disk formats you work with, the more our 
Disk Maker™ system saves time and money by reading 
and/or writing disks in any of over 200 formats No mo¬ 
dems. no patches, no other special software necessary. 

Disk Maker II is a complete, stand alone system with 
one 8 DSDD disk drive, one 48 tpi 5V» ’' DSDD disk 
drive, 6 MHZ Z80B. 64K CP/M system with Disk 
Maker™ software. (96 tpi and second 8' drive option¬ 
al.) Just plug in your terminal and make disks' Bundled 
software includes MicroShell™ /MCALL-II communica¬ 
tions software. Base price: $3,395. 


Supported with comprehensive, easy-to-read manual, 
software updates ($50 00. all formats in revision), and 
additional drives and hard disk options 

Disk Maker " 
prices from 

$ 1,695 


Disk Maker I runs as a peripheral with an S-100 system 
and comes with S-100 controller board, one 48 tpi 
DSDD 5’A” disk drive, dual drive cabinet and power 
supply, cables and Disk Maker software. 96 tpi and 8" 
drives are optional. Base price: $1,695. 


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|703| 471-5598 Order Line (800) 368 3359 
Dealer inquiries welcomed 


368 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 233 












BYTE 1APAN 


numeric printer that prints in draft 
mode at 160 cps. It will retail for about 
$520. 

TWo low-speed, relatively low-cost 
daisy-wheel printers are worth men¬ 
tioning. C. Itoh is selling its Y-10 daisy- 
wheel printer, which weighs only 17 
pounds, at a list price of only about 
$52 5. It has a cassette-interface fea¬ 
ture that lets you change between 
serial and parallel interfaces; you 
swap print wheels using a "slide-in- 
and-snap” loading method. The other 
printer is an original-equipment 
model that's sold here in Japan as the 
Aurora 650. You can buy one for only 
about $360, discounted, which is just 
about the best deal I've seen. It uses 
a film-type ribbon cartridge and prints 
clearly and evenly at 13 cps. It in¬ 
cludes built-in parallel and RS-232C 
serial interfaces. 


New Toshiba MSX 
Computer Can Communicate 

In the December 1984 BYTE Japan I 
discussed the MSX computer phe¬ 
nomenon. MSX is the name of a set 
of standards, developed by Microsoft 
Corporation, for low-cost computers 
based on Z80 or equivalent micropro¬ 
cessors that have Microsoft BASIC in 
ROM (read-only memory). About two 
dozen models of MSX computers are 
available in Japan from all the major 
Japanese computer manufacturers. 



Photo 1: T he 6.5-megabyte floppy-disk 
drive from Hitachi. 


Until now they have been sold almost 
exclusively for playing video games. 
Prices generally range from about 
$200, or even less, up to about $400 
for models with 64K bytes of RAM 
(random-access read/write memory). 
In addition to built-in sound genera¬ 
tors and joystick interfaces. MSX 
machines all have one or more slots 
that can accept standardized 
RAM/ROM cartridges. Hundreds of 
game cartridges are available; most 
sell for about $10 to $20. 

There is little MSX software for any 
purpose other than entertainment, 
and with the computer-game market 
quickly becoming saturated, the MSX 
phenomenon here has been more of 
a curiosity than a force for steady 
growth. 

All of that may change soon, how¬ 
ever. I had a chance to try out 
Toshiba’s newest MSX machine, the 
HX-22. the other day. Due to be 
released in about a week, it's a 64 K- 
byte computer that has a list price of 
only about $360. is supplied with 
useful Japanese-language word-pro- 
cessing software, and includes a stan¬ 
dard RS-232C serial interface and ter¬ 
minal software. A 500K-byte VA- inch 
floppy-disk drive is optional, sup¬ 
ported by the MSX-DOS operating 
system. (See the December 1984 
BYTE Japan, "Hand-held Computers 
and MSX Standards,'' page 365.) The 
standard display is only 40 characters 


wide, but an inexpensive 80-column 
adapter will be available soon. 

The HX-22's serial interface, which 
can operate at speeds up to 19,200 
bits per second, may cause major 
changes in the low-priced computer 
market in Japan. Until now, personal 
computer users here have lagged 
behind their American counterparts 
in terms of communication services 
like bulletin boards, conferencing 
systems, and wide-ranging informa¬ 
tion services like The Source and 
CompuServe. Although The Source is 
available in Japan, there aren't yet any 
widely available analogous Japanese 
services. My guess is that the in¬ 
troduction of the HX-22 (and its in¬ 
evitable competitors) will be a power¬ 
ful stimulus for people to start devel¬ 
oping them. Also, because the HX-22 
includes a sizable Japanese-language 
(kanji) character set in ROM, the road 
is now open for developing informa¬ 
tion and communication services in 
the Japanese language, which is an 
absolute necessity for acceptance of 
this kind of technology by the 
Japenese general public. 

The market for MSX machines is 
fiercely competitive, and other major 
producers like Sony, Canon, Pioneer, 
and Mitsubishi are certain to intro¬ 
duce their own versions of MSX ma¬ 
chines with communications and kanji 
display capabilities; prices in the $275 

[continued] 



Photo 2; An inexpensive (about $520) 18-dot kanji printer from Citizen. 


FEBRUARY 1985 ‘BYTE 369 

















Inquiry 357 


POSTURE SUPPORT 



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1 - 805 - 966-7187 

Or send a check or your credit card # (Diner’s Club, VISA, MasterCard, American 
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shipping). CA residents add 6% sales tax. Sorry no C.O.D. If not satisfied re¬ 
turn within 15 days for refund (less shipping). 


ITEM NO. 

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825 


Stan. BACK CHAIR 

$29.95 


808 


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$49.95 



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Sitting regularly in a conventional chair your lower back is sup¬ 
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THE BACK CHAIR SOLUTION— Sitting on the Back Chair re¬ 
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Standard Chair made of hardwood layers with final layer of 
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Finish. Both come with padded seat and knee pads upholstered 
in Chocolate Brown. 



BYTE JAPAN 


to $300 range wouldn't surprise me 
at all. Toshiba claims it has no plans 
yet to market the HX-22 in the U.S. 
because of the lack of an appropriate 
distribution system, but those kinds of 
plans have a way of changing quickly 
when the company perceives a 
demand. 

Innovations 

Especially in the last few years, inte¬ 
grated-circuit designs have been mov¬ 
ing more and more toward CMOS 
(complementary metal-oxide semi¬ 
conductor) technology. The biggest 
advantage CMOS has to offer is its 
very low power consumption. Al¬ 
though the speeds of CMOS inte¬ 
grated circuits have been increasing, 
they generally can't match the speeds 
obtainable with the older bipolar 
technology. Hitachi has just an¬ 
nounced that it has come up with a 
way to combine both bipolar and 
CMOS elements on the same chip 
and claims that a gate array based on 
the new process has a gate delay, or 
operating speed, of only 0.8 nanosec¬ 
ond. That's comparable to the fastest 
ECL (emitter-coupled logic) chips. Its 
power consumption is only about 0.15 
milliwatt per gate, similar to CMOS. 

Optical-disk technology is moving 
fast, too. Sony has just developed a 
magneto-optical-disk system for 
delivery to the Japanese international 
telephone company this month. The 
significance of the Sony development 
is that the disks are erasable, in con¬ 
trast to other optical-disk systems like 
the one Hitachi introduced at the 
Data Show. The capacity of the disk 
is 1 gigabyte, and a single controller 
can handle up to four disk drives. No 
information about the speed of the 
new system was available, and so far 
Sony hasn't announced that it will 
market the system commercially. 

Coming Up 

Next month I'll cover the IBM JX, 
WordStar 2000, the new Toshiba 
1-megabit RAM chip, and the grow¬ 
ing popularity of UNIX in Japan, and 
I'll compare the Japanese PC-9801 F3 
personal computer with the NEC 
APC-I1I. ■ 


370 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 77 




























BYTE WEST COAST 


Wfiat Next? 


Thunderscan, 
the ins and 
outs of the 
windowing 

game, new 
workstations, 
and more 

by John Markoff, 
Phillip Robinson, 
and Ezra Shapiro 


BYTE West Coast is presented 
monthly by BYTE's editors and staff 
in S an Francisco and Palo Alto. 
Correspondence should be addressed 
to BYTE West Coast . BYTE 
Magazine. 425 Battery St.. San 
Francisco. CA 94111. 


A pple Computer's president, John 
Sculley, has a habit of publicly 
referring to Macintosh graphics as 
“super graphics." However, although the 
Mac may be impressive when compared to 
the Apple II and the IBM PC, we've always 
been a little irritated by the super-graphics 
claim. Shouldn’t the superlatives be re¬ 
served for the new generation of personal 
computers with 1024- by 1024-pixel (picture 
element) bit-mapped screens and hardware 
coprocessing support for animation and 
other sophisticated graphics operations? By 
those standards, the Mac seems primitive 
indeed. 

Yet, over the course of the past few 
months, as new applications have been in¬ 
troduced. the Macintosh has proven to be 
consistently surprising in the quality of its 
graphics. Despite its relatively low number 
of pixels, the Macintosh display is crisp, 
partly because of its small screen size. 

Thunderscan 

Recently, a demonstration given to us by 
Macintosh designer Andy Hertzfeld and 
Tom Petrie of Thunderware provided con¬ 
vincing evidence that if Macintosh graphics 
aren't “super," they're at least a clear step 
above anything else currently available in 
that price range. 

Thunderware, previously known as a 
manufacturer of clocks for the Apple II and 
III, drew a lot of attention when its new Mac¬ 
intosh product, Thunderscan, was intro¬ 
duced at this year's National Computer 
Conference. Thunderscan is a high-resolu- 
tion digitizer that enables the Macintosh to 
capture and later reprocess virtually any im¬ 
age that can be rolled under the platen of 
the Apple Imagewriter dot-matrix printer. 
The process is deceptively simple. Thunder¬ 
scan consists of a palm-size optical sensor 
that snaps into the Imagewriter in place of 
the ribbon cartridge. When a document or 
picture is rolled through the printer, soft¬ 
ware written by Hertzfeld controls the sen¬ 
sor as it slides back and forth over an image. 


Petrie says that Thunderware is sensitive 
about discussing the exact nature of the 
scanning technology used in the device. 
However, he will say that the scanner is able 
to extract analog information from the im¬ 
age and transmit it to one of the Macintosh 
serial ports without having to use traditional 
A/D (analog-to-digital) conversion tech¬ 
niques. 

It's an intriguing process. For example, it's 
possible to increase the resolution of the 
image being scanned by increasing the 
scanning rate. The result of the proprietary 
technology is a low-cost scanning device 
(initially $229) that permits the Macintosh 
to store and manipulate images with a res¬ 
olution in excess of 200 dots per inch. 

According to Petrie.there are a number of 
difficulties in getting graphics images into 
the Macintosh. The greatest problem is that 
high-resolution graphic images require a 
relatively large bit map. Until now, the only 
way of stuffing this information into the Mac 
has been to use a video camera, and video 
cameras are relatively high cost and low res¬ 
olution. (At the same time, it should be 
noted that cameras have the advantage of 
being fast. Because essentially only one row 
of pixels is scanned at a time, it takes Thun¬ 
derscan as long as 15 minutes to digitize 
an entire 8 ‘/ 2 - by 11 -inch document.) 

Once Thunderscan has transmitted an 
image to the Macintosh, software designed 
by programmer Hertzfeld (who has left 
Apple and is now working on his own) can 
do a remarkable job of enhancing or ma¬ 
nipulating it. Not only can you rescale im¬ 
ages, you can also alter brightness and con¬ 
trast to create halftones or high-contrast 
images (see figure 1). Additionally, the Thun¬ 
derscan software contains a number of 
graphics tools familiar to those who have 
used the MacPaint program on the Mac. 
There is also a special “express" option that 
lets you go directly to MacPaint to further 
enhance an image. 

The Thunderscan software operates on a 

( continued ) 


FEBRUARY 1985 • B Y T E 371 











BYTE WEST COAST 


bit map that is stored in the Mac¬ 
intosh RAM (random-access read/write 
memory). The bit map has a size limit 
of 48K bytes on the 128K-byte 
machine. This is just about a full page 
at 72 dots per inch. On the 512K-byte 
Macintosh, a bit map as large as 300K 
bytes can be stored. With this amount 
of information you can store a full 8!4- 
by 11-inch document at up to a 300 
percent magnification. You can use this 
expanded storage space for image en¬ 
largement or to extract gray-scale in¬ 
formation on up to 64 levels of inten¬ 
sity. On the 128K-byte Macintosh, both 
the magnification and the halftoning 
features are available, but only for 
smaller regions of a scanned docu¬ 
ment (a document can be scaled four 
times linearly, yielding a magnification 
of up to 16 times by area). 

To use the equipment, first select a 
page-map option from the scanner's 
menu. From within the page-map 
screen you can choose to scan the 
area of your original by changing the 
size of a selection rectangle. The sys- 

« File Edit Scanner Tools 


tern prompts you with warning mes¬ 
sages if the area you select is either 
too large to store gray-scale informa¬ 
tion or too large to scan. This feature 
also lets you scan just a portion of a 
larger document to make certain that 
you have gray scale and magnification 
set correctly. 

After you've completed the scan¬ 
ning phase, you can play with the im¬ 
age in memory. You can work with a 
document in the same way you use 
MacPaint, with a special image win¬ 
dow. But Hertzfeld has added a series 
of features to the Thunderscan soft¬ 
ware that give it functions that Mac¬ 
Paint doesn't have. You can use a 
special hand icon to move large docu¬ 
ments around in the image window 
(unlike the first release of MacPaint, 
which stored image information out¬ 
side of memory on disk. Thunderscan 
allows the document to slide freely). 

You also can use the hand icon to 
impart inertia. For example, if you 
push the mouse in one direction, the 
image will continue to slide after you 


have stopped, much like a piece of 
paper slides along a table. In addition 
to being intuitive, this feature lets you 
move slowly or quickly around an 
image. 

Other MacPaint icon tools, such as 
the pencil, FatBits, and cutting and 
pasting, as well as inversion (chang¬ 
ing black pixels to white pixels and 
vice versa), are also available within 
Thunderscan. 

Documents created by Thunderscan 
can be saved in one of two formats. 
One is a special MacPaint format 
yielding a 720- by 756-pixel docu¬ 
ment with 1 bit of information per 
pixel. The second is a less-restricted 
scan format that permits multiple bits 
of information to be stored for each 
pixel. 

The range of possibilities that Thun¬ 
derscan creates is fascinating. For ex¬ 
ample. Hertzfeld thinks that it might 
put an end to the burgeoning market 
for Macintosh predrawn images 
because you can copy virtually any 
image into the Macintosh memory. 

A future project for Hertzfeld is a 
Macintosh desk accessory (a small 
program that runs in the background 
under the Mac operating system) that 
will permit Thunderscan to send scan¬ 
ning information out through the 
Macintosh modem port while you 
work in another program. This would 
convert the Macintosh into a low-cost 
(and multitasking) digital-facsimile 
machine. Hertzfeld is also working on 
a protocol that would enable the 
Macintosh to print software code in 
a format that could be scanned using 
Thunderscan. Paper would then be 
the medium for software distribution. 
Hertzfeld believes that he could get 
close to 40K bytes per sheet of paper. 

More Delays for 
Microsoft Windows 

In early October 1984, Microsoft Cor¬ 
poration announced that it was post¬ 
poning the introduction of its long- 
awaited Windows software-integration 
package until June 1985. Leo Nikora, 
Windows product-marketing manager 
at Microsoft, said that the company 
was undertaking "a major redesign,'' 
in part because Windows' code cur- 



Figure I: A scan dump. As Thunderscan scans a document, the image appears on the 
screen display. If can be adjusted dynamically by resetting the contrast and brightness 
gauges on the display. As each line is scanned, a scattergram of the scan appears on 
the Light Intensity Gauge. I n the lower left corner a message reports on the progress of 
the scanner. After the bit map of the image has been transferred to the Macintosh 
RAM it can be edited with several MacPaint-style tools that are displayed as icons in 
the upper left corner of the screen. The image also can be displayed in a larger window 
accessible from the menu bar. 


372 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 



























BYTE WEST COAST 


rently takes up too much space and 
also because several functions are not 
running fast enough. 

As recently as this spring, Microsoft 
was hoping to achieve a minimum re¬ 
commended system size of 192K 
bytes. The most current technical in¬ 
formation available on Windows 
states that Windows together with the 
operating system occupies 156K bytes 
of memory; thus the currently recom¬ 
mended 256K bytes leaves only 
about 100K bytes for applications 
software—not much by today's 
standards. 

Nikora said that almost all of Win¬ 
dows is now written in the C language 
and that Microsoft plans to rewrite as 
much as half of the program in 8088 
assembly language. Apparently 
Microsoft is happy with the window- 
management functions of the pro¬ 
gram but feels that text management 
is inadequate. Nikora said that Micro¬ 
soft expects a twofold increase in text 
performance after the code is rewrit¬ 
ten, although he feels that the perfor¬ 
mance of the product is already 
satisfactory on the IBM PC AT. 

Microsoft is clearly worried that its 
decision to delay Windows will lead 
to a negative attitude in the market¬ 
place. "We have to be careful that 
Microsoft doesn't get the reputation 
of giving up in the face of TopView." 
claims Nikora, referring to IBM's en¬ 
try in the window-management fray. 

He also maintains that Microsoft's 
decision to delay the product intro¬ 
duction hasn't led to mass desertions 
on the part of companies developing 
applications software for Windows. 
On the contrary, he said that there 
was a general feeling of relief that they 
were being given more time to get 
their applications ready for market. 

Microsoft is also looking for a way 
to differentiate Windows from Top- 
View, and the company appears to 
have found one because the current 
version of TopView is designed for a 
character-based display. This will, at 
least temporarily, be a selling point for 
Windows, which functions only in a 
bit-mapped environment. 

Will Windows face the same fate 
that befell Visi On? Nikora says that 


he is certain that it won't—his 
evidence is the fact that a number of 
the manufacturers of IBM PC-com¬ 
patible computers appear to have a 
sizable stake in the success of Win¬ 
dows. Still, Microsoft is starting over 
again after investing more than a year 
in attempting to develop a user inter¬ 
face for the IBM PC. 

CONVERGENT'S FAST NGEN 

Although criticism of the IBM PC AT 
hasn't been nearly as fevered as that 
leveled at the PCjr, there are some 
doubters emerging. Why. some ex¬ 
perts have asked, does the 80286 
microprocessor in the PC AT have an 
artificially lowered clock speed? And 
why is the bus speed even slower than 
the bus speed for the IBM PC? A 
number of companies are already 
comparing their systems to the PC AT 
to demonstrate their systems' per¬ 
formance. 


Several companies are 
already comparing their 
systems to the PC AT 
to demonstrate their 
systems’ performance. 


Convergent Technologies Inc., a 
Santa Clara, California, company is 
selling its NGEN "modular" worksta¬ 
tion based on the Intel 80186 micro¬ 
processor to a variety of OEM sup¬ 
pliers. Last year the NGEN got off to 
a slow start because of the scarcity of 
the 80186, but now Convergent claims 
to have shipped 50,000 systems. 

The NGEN is built around a collec- 

(continued) 


THE RAPID PACE 
DATA BASE. 

the rapid pace of business today demands data storage solutions that can keep pace with 
the dynamics of today’s computing solutions. 

The Bernoulli Box ‘ does just that-by creating, expanding, storing and backing up data 
bases on handy 10-megabyte cartridges (5 megabytes on the single-drive Macintosh “ box). 
Its transfer rates and access times outperform hard disk devices. And when rapid pace 
means getting somewhere fast, your cartridge-contained data bases go with you. 

The Bernoulli Box. Available for the IBM PC, XT, AT, most compatibles, the TI Pro and 
Apple’s Macintosh. 

For the dealer nearest you, call 1-800-556-1234 ext. 215. In California call 
1-800-441-2345 ext. 215. 



THE 


IOMEGA CORPORATION 
1821 West 4000 South 
Roy, Utah 84067 


DULU 


BOX' 


Inquiry 156 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 373 

















When it comes to 
software, nobody's perfect. 
But according to many of the 
experts, one word processing 
program is as close as you can 
get. No wonder it's called 
WordPerfect. 

What are all the critics 
raving about? 

Simplicity. Most 
WordPerfect functions 
require only one keystroke, a 
simple press of a finger. So 
you can concentrate on 
writing, not programming. 

Speed. Because it is 
document- 
oriented 
instead of 
page-oriented, 

WordPerfect 
won't make you 


wait 

between 
pages. No 
matter 
how fast 
you type. 


c iu t**.. w W.. 


WordPerfect is my favorite 

because it is easy, simple 

anrt powerful. The people 


\ 



Digital Review 


Wo; 

List Magazine 
WordPerfect won't slow you 
down. 

Features. From writers to 
doctors, accountants to 
lawyers, WordPerfect has 
built-in special functions to 
meet a wide variety of specific 
needs. And at SSI, every day 
is spent upgrading and 
improving WordPerfect — 
reaching for 
perfection. 

Get your hands 
on the critics' 
choice, WordPerfect 
word processing from SSI. 


It's the closest 
thing to perfection. 

For more 
information, 
see your dealer. 

Or call or write: 

SSI Software 
288 West Center Street 
Orem, Utah 84057 
Information: (801) 224-4000 
Order Desk: 1-800-321-4566, 


Toll-free 



^Software 

Reaching for perfection. 


374 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 274 
















BYTE WEST COAST 


T he NGEN is a quick 
machine, and it has an 
m X-Bms" that allows 
16-hit DMA transfers 
at speeds up to 4 
megabytes per second. 


tion of components; a separate video 
display and keyboard connect to a 
shoebox-size central processor. A 
variety of add-ons such as RAM. 
floppy- and fixed-disk drives, and 
graphics components can be simply 
plugged into the processor module to 
expand the system. Convergent Tech¬ 
nologies' own multitasking multipro- 
grammed operating system (CTOS) 
permits users to run MS-DOS, 
CP/M-86, and Convergent's own flavor 
of UNIX System V called Distrix. 

It's a quick machine; the 80186 runs 
at 8 MHz, and it comes equipped with 
120-nanosecond RAM. The NGEN 
has a proprietary "X-Bus" that allows 
16-bit DMA (direct memory access) 
transfers at speeds up to 4 megabytes 
per second. 

To show off the performance of the 
NGEN, Convergent sets it next to an 
IBM PC AT and then has both systems 
recalculate a series of Fibonacci 
numbers in 2400 cells of a Multiplan 
spreadsheet. It takes the NGEN 4.9 
seconds to recalculate the series 
while the PC AT finishes it in 11.8 
seconds. This performance com¬ 
parison may not be entirely fair, given 
that Multiplan on the NGEN has been 
ported to run under CTOS and in the 
process its performance has been 
considerably improved. However, the 
demonstration gives ample evidence 
that it won't be hard to improve on 
the performance of the PC AT. 

Explosive Compatibles 

Tandem Computers Inc. has a new 
workstation and some associated soft¬ 
ware aimed at the IBM PC crowd. 


Tandem is known for its NonStop sys¬ 
tems. such as the new TXP 32-bit, 
transaction-processing computer. 
Parallel processors and special soft¬ 
ware protects these systems from 
breakdowns, which endears Tandem 
computers to on-line users such as 
airlines and banks. 

The new Dynamite 654x family of 
workstations provides the same fea¬ 
tures as the 653x family of on-line ter¬ 
minals but adds both 3270 emulation 
and personal computer features. The 
Dynamite is built around the 8086 
and can, it is claimed, run most IBM 
PC software. 

The two Dynamite workstations 
(which will be built in Austin, Texas) 
differ in mass-storage capacity and 
price. The 6541 has two 360K-byte 
floppy-disk drives and costs $2995. 
The 6546 has one 360K-byte floppy- 
disk drive and a 10-megabyte hard¬ 
disk drive and will cost $3995. 


Both the 6541 and the 6546 have 
12 -inch green screens (for both text 
and graphics) and 2 56K bytes of 
RAM. The current options include bit¬ 
mapped graphics and memory ex¬ 
pansion to 640K bytes of RAM. The 
Dynamite terminals interface directly 
with Tandem's 5540 and 5541 
printers. 

Dynamite terminals come with MS- 
DOS and GW-BASIC. The new Tandem 
software includes IXF and PCformat. 
IXF (and associated information ex¬ 
change facilities) can transfer data 
from files on a Tandem NonStop sys¬ 
tem to a Dynamite workstation. PCfor¬ 
mat converts such files into MS-DOS- 
compatible files. 

Is Dynamite just another "compati¬ 
ble"? Tandem says it isn't because, 
while the Dynamite can run most IBM 
PC software, it isn't supposed to be 
an IBM PC competitor; it's designed 

( continued ) 



IOMEGA Con 
1821 West 4000 S 
Roy, Utah 84M7 


THE BRIEFCASE 
DATA BASE. 


Your business needs more data base versatility than you get from hard disk systems, 
versatility to help your people work more productively, wherever they are, or go. 

Your business needs The Bernoulli Box, u a storage system that lets you build and 
backup individualized data bases-for payroll, accounting, marketing-on rugged, 
interchangeable 5- and 10-megabyte cartridges. 

It works more reliably, quickly, and flexibly than hard disk alternatives-without 
head crashes. And it works on the IBM PC, XT, AT, compatibles, the TI Pro and Apple’s 
Macintosh. - 

For the dealer nearest you, call 1-800-556-1234 ext. 215. In California 
call 1-800-441-2345 ext. 215^f 

1 * W ' 


Inquiry 157 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 375 





















All Airlines Depart From This Terminal. 


Presenting Travelshopper 
... new from CompuServe 
and TWA. 

Now you can save time and money 
by getting information and reservations 
on virtually any flight on any airline— 
worldwide—from one source. It's TWA’s 
new Travelshopper, available now through 
CompuServe’s Information Service. 

With Travelshopper, you can scan 
flight availabilities, discover airfare bar¬ 
gains and order tickets...on your own 
persona] computer...at home or in the 
office. 

You also receive automatic member¬ 
ship in TWA’s Frequent Flight Bonus SM 
program. And you can build bonus points 
by staying at Marriott and Hilton hotels 
and by using Hertz Rent-A-Car. 


Besides Travelshopper, CompuServe 
offers an ever-growing list of other travel- 
oriented on-line services. 

The Official Airline Guide 
Electronic Edition lists direct and 
connecting flight schedules for over 700 
airlines worldwide plus over 500,000 
North American fares. 

Firstworld Travel offers worldwide 
travel advice and service. 

Discover Orlando provides complete 
prices, hours and features on all of 
Central Florida’s attractions and 
accommodations. 

West Coast Travel offers travel infor¬ 
mation for the western states. 

Pan Am’s Travel Guide contains 
up-to-date information on immigration 


and health requirements for most 
foreign countries. 

And TVavelVision® provides complete 
automotive information, including road 
maps and an expert, personalized routing 
service. 

Let your travel plans really take off. 
Use Travelshopper and lots, lots more 
from CompuServe. 

To buy a CompuServe Starter Kit, see 
your nearest computer dealer. To receive 
our informative brochure; or to order 
direct call or write: 

CompuServe 

P.O. Box 20212, 5000 Arlington Centre Btvd., 

Columbus, Oh*o 43220 

1 - 800 - 848-8199 

In Ohio, Call 1-614-457-0802 


Travelshopper and Frequent Flight Bonus are Service marks of TWA 


An HAR Block Company 


Inquiry 59 





BYTE WEST COAST 


Companies Mentioned 

Convergent Technologies Inc. 

Tandem Computers Inc. 

2500 Augustine Dr. 

19333 Vallco Parkway 

Santa Clara. CA 95051 

Cupertino. CA 95014 

(408) 727-8830 

(800) 482-6336 

Intel Corporation 

TFiunderware 

151 Blue Ravine Rd. 

19 Orinda Way. Suite G 

Folsom. CA 95630 

Orinda. CA 94563 

(916) 351-8080 

(415) 254-6581 

Microsoft Corporation 

10700 Northup Way 

Bellevue. WA 98004 
(206) 828-8080 



specifically to work with Tandem's big¬ 
ger transaction machines. 

Remember Bubbles? 

Intel's Non-Volatile Memory Division- 
one of the few companies still in the 
bubble-memory game—has a couple 
of new removable bubble-memory 
cassette kits: the BCK-10 and the 
BCK-12. Both provide a 1-megabit 
cassette. The BCK-12 prototype kit 
costs $495 and has a limited tempera¬ 
ture range (10 to 55 degrees Celsius). 
The BCK-10 production kit costs $605 
and can survive a greater range of 
temperatures (0 to 65 degrees 
Celsius). The kits include the neces¬ 
sary support chips for the bubble 
memories and an SBC-2 58 board in¬ 
terface with a ribbon-cable output so 
you can just hook the kit up and start 
writing software. Intel is proud of the 
simplicity of these kits: they use only 
six support chips where earlier bub¬ 
ble systems required many more. 

The Intel facility in Folsom, Cali¬ 
fornia, is getting a new fabrication line 
to make 4-megabit bubble chips: the 
standard 1-megabit chips will now 
probably be phased out in 1985 or 
1986. Moving from 4 to 16 megabits 
on a chip (by shrinking the loops) will 
be difficult and should take several 
years—the 4-megabit chips already 
depend on the advanced, expensive 
technique of X-ray lithography. 

Bubble memories aren't found in 
many personal computers: the ex¬ 
pense just can't be justified for routine 


applications. Some portables—the 
Grid and the Sharp—do use bubbles, 
which allow mass-storage with low 
power use. A few add-on boards have 
appeared (such as the Helix board for 
the IBM PC) that exploit the non¬ 


volatility of the bubble chips. While 
both the Grid and the Helix products 
use Intel bubbles, the Sharp portable 
uses Japanese bubble chips. If fabrica¬ 
tion costs can be brought down to a 
reasonable level, bubbles could be 
the storage device of the future, 
though early hopes have long since 
faded. 

A Blue Note 

Rolm—the telecommunications equip¬ 
ment maker—has frequently been 
used as an example of the Silicon 
Valley workstyle because it offers such 
employee benefits as flextime, sab¬ 
baticals, and a multimillion-dollar 
recreation center. TWo senior IBM of¬ 
ficials appeared at Rolm to quell 
speculation that the famous workstyle 
would be threatened by the IBM buy¬ 
out. Said one of the officials. "Con¬ 
trary to what the press has said, we're 
not here to drain the pool.'' ■ 


THE SAVING GRACE 
DATA BASE. 

Businesses today need more than just more data capacity from mass storage devices. They 
need more data dynamics. And that means backup as well as primary storage. 

The Bernoulli Box. ‘ with its removable storage system, delivers both. Not only can you create 
individual data bases on handy 10-megabyte cartridges (5 megabytes on the single-drive 
Macintosh * box), you can backup files-in minutes, not hours. The compact cartridges are 
easily stored. And with the lowest available cost-per-megabvte, you not only save your data. 

— , but money and time as well. 

—T ‘ r 1 T ; ! j The Bernoulli Box. Available 

i | I II for the IBM PC. XT. AT. most 

compatibles, the TI Pro and 

I t i m - Apple’s Macintosh. 

I | For the dealer nearest you, 

1 I call 1-800-556-1234 ext. 

I | 215. In California call 

11 *-»•«> 


IOMEGA CORPORATION 
1821 West 4000 South 
Roy. Utah 84067 



Inquiry 158 


FEBRUARY 1985 "BYTE 377 
















In the beginning there was Dow Jones 
Straight Talk™ 

All across the country; Macintosh™ computers - and their 
owners - are getting smart with just the information they 
need: an electronic encyclopedia, business news and 
information, the latest stock quotes, sports and weather 
reports, airline schedules and feres. Point, click, Dow Jones 
News/Retrieval* and other leading electronic information 
services are at your fingertips. 

In feet so many Macintosh computers are getting smart 
that Straight Talk is a best seller. 

Now there’s more. 

Introducing Dow Jones Spreadsheet link™ and 
Dow Jones Market Manager PLUS™ - new software for the 
Macintosh computer. 


Dow Jones Spreadsheet Link adds brainpower to your 
Multiplan* spreadsheet. Just collect the financial informa¬ 
tion you need from News/Retrieval and - click - Spreadsheet 
Link automatically downloads it into your spreadsheet. 

Dow Jones Market Manager PLUS makes portfolio 
management as easy as using a mouse. With current stock 
price information from News/Retrieval, the Market Manager 
PLUS saves time in record keeping, giving you more time to 
make smart investment decisions. 

(fell for more information on Dow Jones Software™ 

tor the Macintosh computer: 

1-800-345-8500 ext 100 

(Alaska, Hawaii, and foreign, call 1-215-789-7008 ext. 100) 

DowJones 

Software" ^97 


• Macintosh is a track-mark licensed to) Apple Computet Inc Multiplan is a registered trademark of Microsoft (orporation Dow Jones Software is a trademark of Dow Jones & (.ompany. Inc Dow Jones Straight Tklk is a trademark of Dow Jones & 
(company. Inc. Dow Jones News/Retrieval is a registered trademark of Dow Jones & Company. Inc Dow Junes Spreadsheet link is a trademark of Dow Jones & Company Inc Dow Jones Market Manager PIUS is a trademark of Dow Jones & 
Company. Inc. Copyright ©1984 DowJoncs& (ompany, Inc. All Rights Reserved 





_ The 

Whitechapel 

Computer 
Works MG-1 
personal 

workstation 

by Dick Pountain 


Dick Pountain is a technical author 
and software consultant living in 
London. England. He can be 
contacted do BYTE. POB 372. 
Hancock. NH 03449. 


BYTE U.K. 

Realizing a Dream 


I n previous columns I've documented 
some of the activity in British low-cost 
home computer design. Don't run 
away with the idea that we can only make 
home computers, though. This month I've 
been looking at a 32-bit graphics worksta¬ 
tion that provides power roughly equivalent 
to a VAX 11/7 50 at a starting price of £5 500. 

The machine is called the Whitechapel 
Computer Works MG-1 (see photo 1). and 
it is the first product from this start-up com¬ 
pany (let's call them WCW from now on). 
WCW was founded in April 1983 by Manag¬ 
ing Director Timothy Eccles (a physicist 
turned computer engineer who has worked 
at Bell Laboratories. Logica, and Rank 
Xerox) and Technical Director Bob Newman 
(a computer science lecturer at Queen Mary 
College in London). The company is located 
in a new complex called Whitechapel Tech¬ 
nology Centre, which was created with 
assistance from the city council to attract 
high-technology industries back into the de¬ 
industrialized center of London; it seems to 
be working. Design of the MG-1 was begun 
in August 1983 and carried through to pro¬ 
duction in barely a year, with the first units 
shipped in September of 1984. 

Personal Workstations 

For several years I've permitted myself the 
occasional daydream about what my (realiz¬ 
able) dream computer might be. It goes 
something like this: a 68000 or 16032 (this 
was before National Semiconductor de¬ 
cided that 32016 sounded sexier) processor 
in a desktop box, a “clean" architecture with 
lots of memory and straightforward in-mem¬ 
ory bit-mapped graphics (but very high res¬ 
olution), an on-board Winchester drive, and 
above all. hardware assistance for raster- 
graphics operations. In other words, my 
dream computer would be a personal com¬ 
puter (a la Apple II) fed with anabolic 
steroids, or alternatively, the Xerox Alto at 
a personal computer price. 1 kept watching, 
but it didn't quite happen. The Sage (now 
Stride) looked interesting, but what’s this—a 


serial terminal? The Corvus Concept 
showed us that even a 68000 runs out of 
steam if asked to run the screen as well as 
crunching numbers, but the Lisa and Macin¬ 
tosh continue to try. 

The MG-1 fits the bill exactly except that 
it isn't quite in my price range. It isn't meant 
to be, of course. WCW has single-mindedly 
targetted it at the CAD/CAM (computer- 
aided design/computer-aided manufactur¬ 
ing) personal workstation market, com¬ 
peting with machines like Sun, Apollo, and 
Perq, which typically cost over four times 
as much as the MG-1. These dedicated mini¬ 
computers are called “personal worksta¬ 
tions" because only one person uses the 
machine at a time (i.e., they're not multi¬ 
user), but at upwards of £20,000 all but the 
richest firms would require several de¬ 
signers or engineers to share one machine 
on a rota. 

Bob Newman, principal designer of the 
MG-1. reasoned that if he adopted personal 
computer rather than minicomputer design 
techniques (no multiboard bit-slice pro¬ 
cessors, no demountable hard-disk packs, 
no industrial fans), a colossal price reduc¬ 
tion should be possible. He reasoned thus 
at the same time that VLSI (very-large-scale 
integration) technology had made it possi¬ 
ble. Viewed this way, the MG-1 is the first 
truly personal workstation; not only will it 
fit on a desk, but it's priced so that firms 
can afford one per person: it costs about 
the same as a full-spec IBM Personal Com¬ 
puter (PC) XT and less than a PC AT. 

Specifications 

The MG-1 is driven by the NS32016 32-bit 
virtual-memory processor chip, running at 
8 MHz, and mounted along with all the 
other integrated-circuit (IC) components on 
a single personal-computer-style system 
board. An eight-layer board is used to give 
simpler routing for the conductors. This 
board is held in a desktop casing with a 
footprint slightly larger than that of an IBM 

( continued ) 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 379 










BYTE U.K. 


PC; the works are cooled by a single 
miniature silent fan. 

The 32016 is complemented by its 
support chips, the 32082 memory 
manager and the 32081 floating-point 
processor, though the former is still 
suffering from bugs, and WCW cur¬ 
rently has it on a piggyback board 
that contains its own hardware fixes. 
Standard memory is 512K bytes, ex¬ 
pandable in 512K-byte chunks up to 
8 megabytes. At least 100K bytes of 
this memory is devoted to the bit¬ 
mapped black-and-white display that 
has a resolution of 1000 by 800 pixels. 
A 17-inch (landscape format) monitor 
with a display width of 150 characters 
is included, and it can depict an A4 
document page albeit slightly re¬ 
duced to fit the height. Mass storage 
is provided by a single 800K-byte 
floppy-disk drive and a choice of a 
10-. 22-. or 45-megabyte Winchester 
drive built into the case. 

Peripheral expansion is catered to 
by the bold step of adopting the IBM 
PC bus. The MG-1 internal expansion 
unit has three IBM expansion slots 
and IBM cards will work (with the pro¬ 
viso that suitable drivers have to be 
written). Communication is via a built- 
in Ethernet interface for networking 
MG-ls to share the expensive laser 
printers or plotters necessary to print 


on the high-resolution screen. An 
RS-232C port enables a local draft- 
quality printer or modem to be 
attached. 

The operating system is Genix, a 
Berkeley 4.1 UNIX customized by 
WCW to support the MG-l's graphics 
abilities, for which optimized C, FOR¬ 
TRAN, and Pascal compilers are 
offered. 

Raster Graphics 

A CAD/CAM workstation has very 
specific requirements (which I believe 
are, in the main, also the requirements 
for future personal computers). It is 
by definition an interactive system 
that dictates very fast response times 
even for the most complex opera¬ 
tions. 

It must be capable of very-high- 
resolution graphics. In a low-cost 
machine this has to be achieved by 
using a direct refresh bit-mapped 
screen. Personal computer users are 
quite familiar with bit-mapped graph¬ 
ics; it's the rule rather than the excep¬ 
tion. However, in the CAD/CAM busi¬ 
ness it isn't yet the rule, but one tech¬ 
nique among many; random-scan vec¬ 
tor displays still are in use, and where 
a raster display is used it frequently 
has a dedicated frame buffer separate 
from main memory. 


WCW decided that the bit-map data 
should be in main memory (just like 
an Apple II or IBM PC) so that multi¬ 
ple screen buffers could be uti¬ 
lized; animation then can be achieved 
by building one screen while another 
is being displayed. The other advan¬ 
tage of having the bit map in main 
memory is that it simplifies the use of 
RasterOps as the primitive graphics 
operations. 

RasterOp (called BitBlt, for Bit Block 
TVansfer, at Xerox PARC [Palo Alto Re¬ 
search Center]) is a fast algorithm for 
doing bit-mapped graphics. Anyone 
who has written a BASIC program to 
draw a circle knows that it takes a long 
time to move that circle (by redraw¬ 
ing it again somewhere else); the com¬ 
putation of which points to plot is 
wastefully repeated every time the cir¬ 
cle is drawn. RasterOp, in a nutshell, 
says "don't redraw the circle, move the 
bits that make up the first circle.'' Rec¬ 
tangular areas of the screen data 
(called "rasters") are directly moved 
about in the bit map using raster 
block-move operations (RasterOp). 
Unlike, for instance, simple Z80 block 
moves, with RasterOp you can do 
Boolean operations (AND,OR,XOR) 
between the destination and source 
rasters so you can get effects like over¬ 
lapping transparent backgrounds or 
use mask rasters to clip shapes. Much 
of the theory and practice of this kind 
of graphics was worked out at Xerox 
PARC in the 1970s (by the Smalltalk 
people, among others), and it lives to¬ 
day in the Lisa and Mac. (For more in¬ 
formation on Smalltalk, see the 
August 1981 BYTE.) 

Display systems based on RasterOp 
tend to be homogeneous; there is no 
distinction between "text'' and 
"graphics." All text characters are 
handled as rasters, and this is what 
makes the plethora of different type 
styles possible on the Macintosh. 
Because of this total reliance, the ef¬ 
ficiency of RasterOp becomes critical. 

There are two computation prob¬ 
lems when using RasterOp; what to 
do if a raster (which is defined in bit 
coordinates) doesn’t lie nicely on byte 
or word boundaries, and how to find 
the actual memory addresses of the 



Photo 1: The Whitchapel Computer Works MG-1 uses the National Semiconductor 32016 
32 -bit virtual-memory processor chip. 


380 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 













BYTE U.K. 


lines in a raster (don't forget that suc¬ 
cessive lines in a rectangle on the 
physical screen aren't contiguous in 
memory). The amount of computa¬ 
tion involved can bring even the most 
powerful of the new microprocessors 
to its knees if it has to do the com¬ 
putation every time it wants to write 
a character or scroll the screen in ad¬ 
dition to all its other duties. 

Having decided on a 1000 by 800 
screen (the minimum for a serious 
CAD display), WCW was committed to 
a lOOK-byte bit map. It's often neces¬ 
sary to treat the whole screen as a 
raster (e.g., when scrolling) so you 
have to be able to deal with single 
graphic objects of up to 100K bytes 
in size. The main design question has 
now answered itself. A 32K-bit pro¬ 
cessor is necessary to efficiently 
manipulate objects larger than 64K 
bytes. When writing a program on the 
MG-1 in C. for example, you can pass 


the whole screen as a single array. 

WCW then decided to provide a 
separate video processor to handle 
RasterOps; this unit performs the 
shifts to align rasters to word boun¬ 
daries, masking, and Boolean opera¬ 
tions. It also calculates the addresses 
of rasters and feeds them to the 
microprocessor. The 32016 isn't 
loaded with any of these chores. 

By employing some tricky design 
techniques, including a 64K-bit-wide 
memory bus, WCW has managed to 
attain a flickerless 60-MHz screen- 
refresh rate using industry-standard 
150-nanosecond memory chips. The 
total memory bandwidth available is 
200 MHz, giving sufficient leeway for 
the 32016 to access memory with ef¬ 
fectively no wait states. 

The 32016's demand-paged virtual 
memory means that the data for a 
single screen might be scattered all 
over physical memory in different 


pages. Rather than waste time reor¬ 
ganizing these fragments into a con¬ 
tiguous lOOK-byte block, the video 
controller maintains a page map so 
that it always knows where its images 
are stored. 

The result of all these design deci¬ 
sions is spectacularly fast graphics 
operation combined with easy pro¬ 
gramming in high-level languages. 
Rasters can be created and processed 
anywhere in main memory and then 
moved onto the screen. As many 
screens as memory allows can be 
held in memory simultaneously, and 
with virtual memory, "memory allows'' 
has a broad meaning. The MG-1 
employs a two-level paging system 
similar to that on the VAX. 

At a somewhat higher level, WCW 
has implemented the GKS (Graphical 
Kernel System) graphics standard, 
which is more suitable for CAD/CAM 

( continued ) 


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Town & Faire Center 
(415) 397-1311 
(415) 945-8011 


Inquiry 12 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 381 













































































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CERTIFIED 100% ERROR-FREE 


Inquiry 190 


I.B.M. Compatible 

Case $100.00 
KeyBoard $149.00 
Motherboard without 
BIOS $280.00 
Power Supply 130 
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Multi Function Card 
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Floppy Disk Control 
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Inquiry 138 


BYTE 


applications programmers than are 
the raw raster-graphics primitives. 

I/O Hardware 

The adoption of virtual-memory UNIX 
together with the constraints imposed 
by the high-performance display 
places extraordinary demands on the 
hard-disk subsystem. 

Again Newman broke away from 
minicomputer design practices and 
went for a solution taken from the per¬ 
sonal computer domain: a central 
DMA (direct memory access) con¬ 
troller rather than complex multiple 
buses. The single-chip DMA controller 
can load consecutive blocks to any 
page in memory and works fast 
enough to do without buffering; there 
is a direct path from memory to the 
Winchester disk. In one rotation of the 
disk a whole track can be loaded, 
shotgun fashion, into a scattered 
selection of pages. Apart from perfor¬ 
mance and cost benefits, this scheme 
has the virtue of providing DMA ser¬ 
vice for any IBM expansion cards 
fitted to the expansion bus. 

The Ethernet controller can't be as 
simple because Ethernet requires 
devices to receive its packets of infor¬ 
mation without warning and at very 
high speed. With Ethernet, buffering 
was found to be necessary under 
operating system control using a sec¬ 
ond DMA device. 





6800/6809 

Micro Modules 


OEM 6800/6809 MICROCOMPUTER 
MODULES for dedicated control and 
monitoring. Interfaces for sensors, 
transducers, analog signals, 
solenoids, relays, lamps, pumps, 
motors, keyboards, displays, IEEE-488, 
serial I/O, floppy disks. 


WINTER 


Wintek Corp. 

1801 South Street 
Lafayette. IN 47904 
317-742-8428 


Inquiry 332 


Operating System 

Having decided upon the 32016, 
WCW was faced with the crucial 
choice of an operating system. UNIX 
turned out to be the only commercial¬ 
ly widespread operating system that 
could support 32-bit virtual memory 
and had a reasonable software base. 
The fact that UNIX was designed for 
timeshared multiuser systems and has 
no support for graphics didn't help. 

National Semiconductor already 
had Genix, based on UNIX System II 
with the BSD (Berkeley Software 
Distribution) extensions, available for 
the 32016. WCW had to do consider¬ 
able work to get satisfactory perfor¬ 
mance in a single-user, interactive, 
graphics-based application quite 
unlike that for which it was designed. 


U.K. 


One of the biggest problems with 
UNIX is its poor response time to in¬ 
terrupts. Like most modern worksta¬ 
tions. the MG-1 uses a mouse for cur¬ 
sor control and a mouse works by 
sending interrupts to the operating 
system to say that it's moved. If UNIX 
is busy elsewhere, cursor movement 
will start to lag noticeably behind 
mouse movement, thus destroying 
the visual illusion upon which mouse 
control is based. It's like driving a car 
with a flexible rubber steering wheel. 
Newman, typically, went for a hard¬ 
ware solution. The cursor is not rep¬ 
resented in the main bit map as on 
most other systems. Instead another 
coprocessor is employed to read the 
mouse position continuously, and the 
64-pixel cursor is produced in a small 
separate memory, then video-mixed 
with the main display. UNIX and the 
main processor are only interrupted 
when some action is to be taken, i.e., 
a mouse button has been pressed. 
This same coprocessor handles the 
"soft" keyboard too. which makes it 
earn its keep. 

Another problem arises with the 
windowing system, for which UNIX's 
process communication system is not 
ideal. WCW is working on the window 
manager and has decided to treat it 
as a user program rather than an ex¬ 
tension to the UNIX kernel. This will 
permit experienced users to modify 
it if they wish. 

One of the great dangers with UNIX 
is system corruption on shutdown; 
you can't simply switch off the power 
on a UNIX system as you can with 
CP/M or MS-DOS and expect it to 
come back up unscathed. Huge 
amounts of housekeeping and reshuf¬ 
fling need to be done before UNIX 
can be put to sleep. Because personal 
computer users are used to a more 
cavalier attitude toward their 
machines, WCW took a leaf out of 
Lisa's book and provided a soft power 
switch. When you hit the "power-off" 
button, power is not disconnected im¬ 
mediately; instead an orderly UNIX 
shutdown is initiated while you are on 
your way down the stairs to catch your 
bus. 

( continued) 















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Apple lie (with extended 80 col - 
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A New Age Dawns for 
Microcomputer Programming 


PROMAL M is innovative. 

PROMAL (PROgrammer's Micro 
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PROMAL is complete* 

It's a fast, structured programming 
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Commodore 64 Benchmarl 

(Sieve of Eratosthenes) 


Execution Time (secs.) 

30 

630 

490 

51 

55 


Object Code Size (bytes) 

128 

255 

329 

181 

415 


Program Load Time (secs.) 

3.2 

33 

63 

11.2 

235 


Compile Time (secs.) 

85 

— 

— 

3.9 

108 



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Long variable names 
Gobal, Local, & Arg variables 
Byte, Word, Integer & Real types 
Dec or Hex number types 
Functions w/passed arguments 
Procedures w/passed arguments 
Built in I/O library 
Arrays, strings, pointers 
Control Statements: IF-ELSE, IF, WHILE, 
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INCLUDE, NEXT, ESCAPE, REFUGE 
Compiler I/O from/to disk or memory 

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Command oriented, w/line editing 
Memory resident 
Allows multiple user programs in 
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Function key definitions 
Program abort and pause 
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Batch jobs 

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Full-screen, cursor driven 
Function key controlled 
Une insert, delete, search 
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SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES 

3700 Computer Drive, Dept. PB-2 
Raleigh, North Carolina 27609 


Inquiry 306 















































BYTE U.K. 


New From 

APPLEWARE, ll\)C. 

Improved Programs • Lower Prices 
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Inquiry 23 



8051/52 DEVELOPMENT BOARD 

8051-Based Single-Board Computer with 
Monitor/Debugger 

■4 28-pin byte-wide 
sockets; monitor will 
program EEPROMS. 

■Perfect for System 
Development and 
Educational Applications 

S335 

r ^Binary Technology 

P.O. BC 




MERIDEN. NH 03770 • 603/469-3232 


Inquiry 30 


Interpreter / Compiler 

• dBASE II R source compatible 

• Runs 3-20 times faster than dBASE II 

• Up to 48 fields per record 

• Full type-ahead capabilities 

• Provides compact object code and 
program security 

• Twice as many memory variables 
as dBASE II 

• Sophisticated online manual and 
HELP facility 

MS-DOS $395 AOS/VS $995 

dBASE II is a le^swrsd trademark o* Ashton Tate 

FOX SOFTWARE INC. 

13330 Bishop Road. P.O. Box 269 
Bowling Green. OH 43402 / 419-354-3981 


Hardware solutions 


are becoming cheaper 
than writing software. 


Other little goodies include a 
battery-backed real-time clock/calen¬ 
dar and CMOS (complementary 
metal-oxide semiconductor) RAM 
(random-access read/write memory) 
area for holding system information 
to assist service engineers in mainte¬ 
nance and fault tracing. 

Software 

WCW does not intend to become a 
supplier of CAD/CAM software. The 
sort of client they are aiming the MG-1 
at will typically have some existing 
software system or will have a 
specification for such a system and 
the capability to write it. WCW will 
provide an operating system with 
graphics support (included in the 
machine's price), the GKS Kernel, a 
window manager, and three high- 
quality compilers for Pascal, C, and, 
in recognition of its huge existing soft¬ 
ware base, FORTRAN. 

The Future 

There's no point in pretending that the 
MG-1 is a personal computer in its 
present form. It’s an extremely power¬ 
ful and cost-effective tool for engi¬ 
neers. designers, and possibly arti¬ 
ficial-intelligence researchers, but it re¬ 
quires a plotter or a laser printer to 
provide proper hard-copy output 
(hence the Ethernet). A serial dot- 
matrix printer could only produce 
text output for program listings. 

As a personal computer user I am 
interested in the MG-1 because the 
design decisions embodied in it are 
relevant to the next generation of per¬ 
sonal computers. In particular. Bob 
Newman's philosophy of "do it in 
hardware where you can'' is at odds 
with current thinking in certain large 
corporations, where a reliance on 
software solutions seems to be based 
on highly optimistic estimates of the 
power of the new microprocessors. 


Besides, we are entering an epoch in 
which hardware solutions are becom¬ 
ing cheaper than writing software. 

At the moment, the Macintosh is by 
far the cheapest personal computer 
using advanced raster graphics. Could 
the functionality of an MG-1 be had 
for the price of a Macintosh? The 
32016 chip set is still terrifyingly ex¬ 
pensive and constitutes a significant 
fraction of the hardware costs, but this 
factor should ease in coming years as 
the various 32-bit chips get into 
volume manufacture. Similarly, the 
price of 2 56K-bit memory parts and 
of Winchester disks is steadily falling. 
Custom gate arrays could do away 
with most of the discrete logic used 
in the MG-1. Perhaps most significant, 
though, is the new generation of 
graphics coprocessor chips that are 
on the way; for example INMOS's 
G213 Graphics Controller promises 
BitBlt at 8 million pixels per second. 
Laser printers are tumbling in price 
(witness the Canon), or perhaps one 
of the more potent dot-matrix printers 
like the Epson LQ-1500 could be per¬ 
suaded. like Apple's Imagewriter, to 
perform as a fast graphics device. 

Speculation aside, a most exciting 
prospect arises because the MG-1 
possesses sufficient brawn to support 
the Xerox Smalltalk language system. 
Newman is enthusiastic about Small¬ 
talk and sees it as a possible develop¬ 
ment, though the marketing people 
are not yet convinced that a real de¬ 
mand exists. Tektronix announced the 
HS 4404 Artificial Intelligence System 
with Smalltalk-80 at $14,950—the 
cheapest Smalltalk system so far (see 
What's New, October 1984 BYTE, 
page 39). You won't need a spread¬ 
sheet to work that out; an MG-1 
should do it for about half that price 
with a laser printer thrown in. This 
would at least put Smalltalk into the 
hands of educational institutions, but 
it remains well beyond private 
pockets. More's the pity. 

WCW should have a subsidiary in 
the U.S. in operation by the time this 
column is printed. Contact White¬ 
chapel in the U.K. at 75 Whitechapel 
Rd.. London El, England. BYTE hopes 
to review the MG-1 in a future issue. ■ 


Inquiry 114 




































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FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 385 


















Photographed at Gulfstream Aerospace, Savannah, GA. 

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Inquiry 311 


Copyright © 1984 Texas Instruments Incorporated. 













COMPUTERS AND LAW 



Copying 

Mass-Marketed Software 


Both sides 
of the Lotus 
lawsuits 


by Robert Greene 
Sterne and 
Perry J. Saidman 


Robert Greene Sterne and Perry J. 

Saidman are attorneys with the 
computer-law firm Saidman. Sterne. 
Kessler. & Goldstein in Washington. 
DC. They are also contributing 
editors for BYTE. They can be 
contacted do BYTE. POB 372. 
Hancock. NH 03449. 


T his is the first of our columns on 
computers and law, and a few 
words are in order. As contributing 
editors, we will examine state-of-the-art 
computer-law issues. Since the law lags 
behind the technology and the technology 
is evolving at a rapid rate, legal systems 
everywhere are being confronted with such 
novel legal questions as legal protection of 
application and operating-system software, 
user rights against vendors for defective 
hardware and software, ownership rights in 
microcomputer technology created by in¬ 
dependent contractors, and the right to 
publish protected software in user maga¬ 
zines. The resolution of such questions will 
shape the microcomputer industry in the 
years ahead. In our columns, we will ad¬ 
dress a given computer-law issue, present 
the arguments and legal precedents, if any. 
on either side, and let you decide which is 
more persuasive. This, we hope, will foster 
an awareness of computer-law issues. 

The Lotus Lawsuits 

Lotus Development Corporation has started 
the next round in the legal prizefight be¬ 
tween software vendors and users of mass- 
marketed software packages. In the winter 
of 1983/84, Lotus filed a lawsuit against 
Rixon, a maker of modems and multiplex¬ 
ers in Silver Spring, Maryland, alleging that 
Rixon personnel have made more than 10 
unauthorized copies of Lotus 1-2-3 and as¬ 
sociated documentation. The suit was 
quickly settled. According to the trade 
press, Rixon agreed to a permanent injunc¬ 
tion against unauthorized copying and paid 
Lotus an undisclosed sum of money. The 
suit received widespread publicity and sent 
shock waves through corporate America. 

Flush with victory, Lotus filed suit in July 
1984 against Health Group Inc. (HG1). Lotus 
alleged that HGI had made several un¬ 
authorized copies of the Lotus 1-2-3 disks 
and delivered them to its hospitals and 
nursing homes in the southeastern United 
States. The suit was settled by consent 


decree in September 1984, a little more 
than two months after it was initiated. As 
Rixon did. HGI agreed to a permanent in¬ 
junction against unauthorized copying and 
paid Lotus an undisclosed sum of money. 
This suit also has received widespread pub¬ 
licity. 

These two lawsuits appear to be the 
beginning of a wave of such suits by soft¬ 
ware vendors against institutional users— 
manufacturers, service organizations, 
governmental bodies, schools—whose per¬ 
sonnel are making unauthorized copies of 
mass-marketed software packages. This ac¬ 
tivity seems to be enormous and growing. 
Depending on whom you talk to, estimates 
range from 1 to 20 unauthorized copies for 
each authorized copy. These unauthorized 
copies represent an enormous amount of 
money: estimates place it in the hundreds 
of millions of dollars. 

Top executives at several large software 
houses have indicated to us that they are 
seriously thinking of following Lotus's lead. 
We also know from discussions with top 
lawyers at several large companies and 
governmental agencies that a massive 
cleanup campaign is afoot as organizations 
silently trash their unauthorized copies. 

Legal Issues Involved 

All this has started a spirited, and often very 
heated, debate between vendors and users. 
Vendors see this as a market-correcting 
mechanism for keeping institutional users 
"honest." Many users grudgingly agree but 
wonder if the vendors might not be biting 
the hand that feeds them. A vocal group 
of users vehemently disagrees with the ven¬ 
dors and charges that this is nothing more 
than an attempt to intimidate us ts into 
paying inflated license fees. The users warn 
that the upshot of this will be a loss of 
creativity and freedom as big business 
tightens its grip on the microcomputer 
market. 

In its suit against HGI. Lotus alleged six 

( continued) 


FEBRUARY 1985 ‘BYTE 387 












COMPUTERS & LAW 


Lotus claimed 


maximum statutory 
damages of $ 50,000 
for each unauthorized 
copy plus court costs. 


legal theories (called counts) to sup¬ 
port the legal remedies sought, in¬ 
cluding a permanent injunction 
against unauthorized copying, com¬ 
pensatory money damages, lost prof¬ 
its. statutory money damages, at¬ 
torneys' fees, and court costs. If the 
Lotus Development Corporation had 
been awarded relief on all counts in 
the amounts alleged in the complaint, 
HGI would have been out more than 
2 million dollars. 

Count one alleged that HGI had 
willfully infringed the Lotus copyrights 
on Lotus 1-2-3. Lotus stated that it 
owned two copyright registrations— 
TX 1-233-501 and TX 1-233-502—in 
the Lotus 1-2-3 packages, which in¬ 
clude the user's manual and the soft¬ 
ware disks. It stated that the two 
registrations had effective dates prior 
to the date on which infringement 
began. This was important, since 
Lotus could not receive statutory 
damages or attorneys' fees for any in¬ 
fringement that occurred before the 
effective date of the copyright regis¬ 


trations. Lotus also stated that all 
lawful copies of Lotus 1-2-3 had car¬ 
ried a proper copyright notice. It al¬ 
leged that since the infringement was 
willful, it was entitled to attorneys' 
fees and statutory damages of 
$50,000 for "each act of infringe¬ 
ment'' (i.e., each unauthorized copy!) in 
addition to a permanent injunction 
and court costs. 

Court decisions have been handed 
down that find that application soft¬ 
ware is entitled to copyright protec¬ 
tion and that verbatim copying con¬ 
stitutes copyright infringement unless 
it is authorized by agreement or by 
law. Further, the Copyright Office 
routinely grants copyright registra¬ 
tions for application software that is 
in compliance with the registration re¬ 
quirements. What is of great signifi¬ 
cance in count one is that Lotus al¬ 
leged that it was entitled to statutory 
damages in the maximum of $50,000 
for each unauthorized copy. Section 
504(c) of the Copyright Act of 1976 
states that the copyright owner may 
receive instead of actual damages and 
profits "an award of statutory 
damages for all infringements in¬ 
volved in the action, with respect to 
any one work....'' Statutory damages 
range from $100 to $50,000 depend¬ 
ing on whether the infringement is in¬ 
nocent or willful. While the court has 
considerable latitude in the actual 
dollar amount, many legal experts 
argue that the language of Section 
504 and its legislative history do not 
permit the court to multiply the 


statutory-damage dollar amount by 
the number of unauthorized copies. 
There do not appear to be any legal 
decisions that have addressed this 
precise issue. 

The resolution of the statutory- 
damage issue will have far-reaching 
practical effects. If Lotus were correct 
in its interpretation and if the court 
agreed that it should receive the max¬ 
imum $50,000 for each infringing 
copy, then Lotus would have received 
1 million dollars for 10 unauthorized 
copies of Lotus 1-2-3 (multiplied by 
two since there were two copyright 
registrations). If Lotus were incorrect in 
its interpretation, then it would have 
received $50,000 for the 10 un¬ 
authorized copies. Compare these 
two amounts to $4950, which is 
calculated by multiplying the 10 
unauthorized copies by $495 (the 
suggested retail price for Lotus 1-2-3). 
Under the 1909 Copyright Act, the 
current law's predecessor, some court 
decisions multiplied "in lieu" dam¬ 
ages (similar to statutory damages) by 
the number of infringements of a 
single work. Fine lines were drawn as 
to the number of infringements. For 
example, one factor was whether the 
unauthorized copies were made all at 
once or over a space of time. Essen¬ 
tially, courts were finding ways to 
justify the multiplication approach in 
situations where a large number of 
unauthorized copies had been made 
of a single work and they felt that only 
one statutory amount was insufficient. 

Supporters of the Lotus interpreta- 


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388 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 260 















COMPUTERS & LAW 


tion argue that the multiplication is 
proper since it fulfills the intent 
behind statutory damages, which is to 
provide adequate relief to the copy¬ 
right owner. They point out that it is 
form over substance if multiplication 
is allowed when unauthorized copies 
are made over time and not allowed 
if they are made all at once. They 
maintain that the court should have 
discretion both with the dollar 
amount of the statutory damage and 
with the number of times it is 
awarded. 

Detractors of the Lotus interpreta¬ 
tion go straight to the language of 
Section 504. They see no ambiguity 
and argue that only one amount of 
statutory damages can be awarded 
for all infringements of a single work. 
They note that the legislative history 
of Section 504 supports this inter¬ 
pretation. They see the availability of 
actual damages and profits as the 
mechanism to compensate the copy¬ 
right owner where there have been 
many unauthorized copies of a single 
work. Any other approach, they argue, 
would allow the copyright owner to 
effectively obtain punitive damages, 
which are unavailable under the 
copyright law. 

Count two alleged that HGI com¬ 
mitted willful trademark infringement 
since the unauthorized copies con¬ 
tained the Lotus and 1-2-3 trademarks. 
As pointed out in our article "Trade¬ 
marking Software Packages" (March 
1984 BYTE, page 393). trademarks 
often offer the most effective way to 
protect mass-marketed software pack¬ 
ages. It is interesting to see that Lotus 
thought enough of its trademark 
rights to allege that it was entitled to 
not less than 1 million dollars for their 
infringement. It has been well docu¬ 
mented that Lotus has spent millions 
of dollars advertising and promoting 
Lotus 1-2-3. It makes good business 
sense that Lotus would try to protect 
this investment by vigorously enforc¬ 
ing its rights in its trademarks and 
goodwill. 

Count three is of interest because 
Lotus alleged that HGI violated the 
terms of the license agreement that 
accompanied the lawful copy of Lotus 


1-2-3. This is the so-called shrink-wrap 
license, which you find under the clear 
wrapper that encases Lotus 1-2-3 
before you first open it. The whole 
issue of shrink-wrap licenses was 
debated at the BYTE Computer Show 
in San Francisco in September 1984. 
(T^pes of the software piracy session 
(SSI) can be purchased for $8 from 
Professional Cassette Center, 180 East 
California Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91105, 
(818) 796-0200.) 

Lotus alleged that the unauthorized 
copies breached the provision of the 
shrink-wrap license that states that the 
user "may not . . . make copies of the 
User's Manual or the 1-2-3 system 
disk..." Vendors argue that the 
shrink-wrap license becomes binding 
on the user when the software pack¬ 
age is opened and not returned and 
that contractual provisions against 
copying are valid. Users take the op¬ 
posite view. First, they argue that a 
shrink-wrap license is not binding 
because the user never has accepted 
it. They also argue that even if there 
has been acceptance, the copying 
provisions are invalid because they 
are in conflict with the copying provi¬ 
sions contained in Section 117 of the 
1980 Software Amendments to the 
1976 Copyright Act. Section 117 states 
that "it is not an infringement for the 
owner of a copy of a computer pro¬ 
gram to make or authorize the mak¬ 
ing of another copy or adaptation of 
that computer program provided: (1) 
that such a new copy or adaptation 
is created as an essential step in the 
utilization of the computer program 
in conjunction with the machine and 
that it is used in no other manner, or 
(2) that such new copy or adaptation 
is for archival purposes only and that 
all archival copies are destroyed in the 
event that continued possession of 
the computer program should cease 
to be rightful." 

Users argue that, when it is read 
literally, the Lotus copying prohibition 
is in conflict with Section 117 and thus 
is invalid due to preemption under 
Section 301 of the copyright law. 
Essentially, preemption means that 
the federal copyright law will take 
precedence over any state law that is 


It would seem that 


Lotus is picking 
and choosing its 
targets carefully. 


in direct conflict with it. 

Count four alleged that HGI unjust¬ 
ly enriched itself by making and using 
the unauthorized copies. Count five 
alleged that HGI committed fraud and 
misrepresentation. And, finally, count 
six alleged that HGI violated the Ten¬ 
nessee Consumer Protection Act. 
Each of these counts may have been 
viable, but the real teeth of the Lotus 
action were in counts one to three. 

Why Settle? 

Lotus has been able to settle both of 
these suits to its satisfaction outside 
of court. Thus, we have no way of 
knowing whether a court would find 
one or more of the alleged legal 
theories valid. Cynics would argue 
that Lotus and other vendors will only 
bring lawsuits in situations with a high 
probability of settlement. In other 
words, they are deliberately avoiding 
a legal test of these legal theories. 

There is definite merit to the argu¬ 
ment that Lotus is picking and choos¬ 
ing its targets carefully. This is exact¬ 
ly what Apple did when it successful¬ 
ly went after copiers of its operating- 
system software. This approach was 
also employed by Bally, Atari, and 
other electronic-game manufacturers. 
Copyright owners have learned to be 
very careful in bringing lawsuits involv¬ 
ing new computer-law theories. An 
unfavorable decision, even if later 
overruled, can have a major impact on 
that theory of computer law for years. 
A loss also generates adverse publici¬ 
ty for the vendor, which makes settle¬ 
ments in other situations more dif¬ 
ficult to obtain. 

How Do They Find Out? 

We were interested in learning how 
vendors find out about institutional 

( continued ) 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 389 









COMPUTERS & LAW 


Lotus" User? 

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■ Lotus Enhancement Software 

■ Books and Training Aids 

■ Hardware and Utilities 

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Dept. A-108 

PO. Box 22657 

Santa Barbara, CA 93121 

(800) 524-5678 Toll Free 

(805) 564-2424 In California 




Your definitive Lotus enhancement source 


Inquiry 3 


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Inquiry 102 



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Inquiry 317 


Users argue that the 
root of the problem 
lies in inflated prices 
of software. 


copying. It seems that vendors are as 
creative in this regard as users are in 
making unauthorized copies. They ap¬ 
pear to have two major avenues of in¬ 
formation. The first involves vendor 
software support. The actual user of 
an unauthorized copy will call the ven¬ 
dor’s support number for assistance. 
In helping the user, the vendor begins 
to realize that the copy is unautho¬ 
rized. It may sound crazy but this is 
exactly what happened in the Rixon 
situation. 

The other avenue is employees. It 
is understandable that disgruntled 
former employees often inform on 
their former employer as a way of get¬ 
ting revenge. Vendors meet with such 
people, and if their stories check out. 
a legal action may result. Even more 
interesting is the present employee 
who is having pangs of conscience. 
Management is asking him to make 
unauthorized copies, and he feels that 
it is wrong. 

The unauthorized copies occur for 
many different reasons: a supervisor 
may have it done to keep within 
budget; a purchasing agent may make 
the procurement process so cumber¬ 
some that unauthorized copying is 
the path of least resistance; or a cor¬ 
porate attitude may evolve that con¬ 
dones and even applauds unautho¬ 
rized copying. Vendor lawyers told us 
that this is one of the major areas of 
reform that the suits are intended to 
achieve. 

In the Final Analysis 

Users argue that much of the un¬ 
authorized copying would not be tak¬ 
ing place if vendors had more en¬ 
lightened marketing policies. They 
think that it is absurd that they have 
to pay such a high price for the nth 
copy of the same software package. 


Some vendors are responding to this 
argument by implementing site 
licenses that allow multiple copies to 
be obtained at discounted prices. This 
seems to make economic sense for 
vendors due to the economy of scale 
that is present. 

Some users argue that the root of 
the problem lies in the inflated prices 
of software, whether in single or multi¬ 
ple copies. They contend that copy¬ 
ing. whether by institutions or in¬ 
dividuals for their own use, would 
come down in direct proportion to a 
reduction in price. It is a kind of 
supply-side economic theory. 

Vendors see things quite the op¬ 
posite. They argue that high prices are 
due to the lost sales caused by the un¬ 
authorized copying. Contrary to the 
myth of exorbitant profits, they point 
to the shakeout in the microcomputer 
software industry as proof positive 
that they cannot afford to shave their 
profits any more than they have. They 
point out that creating a commercial¬ 
ly successful software package today 
requires a team of specialists—de¬ 
signers. programmers, technical 
writers, marketing specialists, and ad¬ 
ministrative personnel—and big devel¬ 
opment and marketing budgets. Gone 
are the days of shoestring success 
stories such as Electric Pencil. They 
constantly come back to the fact that 
the financial community no longer is 
in awe of the software industry and 
demands significant returns for its 
software investments. 

Where Does This Leave Us? 

There is no doubt that the Lotus suits 
are having a major impact on institu¬ 
tional users. As time goes on. a 
greater percentage of mass-marketed 
software will be used by institutional 
users as microcomputers find their 
way onto desks and workstations 
throughout the country. Lotus and 
others intend to make sure that 
authorized software is used with these 
machines. Sooner or later, one of 
these users will actually be sued and 
will fight back. That first court case will 
have an impact that will cause the im¬ 
pact of Lotus's two out-of-court settle¬ 
ments to pale by comparison. ■ 


























Put an ATtack board 
under your hood J 


... not just anot 
turbo board. 




of programmers, engineers, and system houses working 

with CAD, CAE, LAN and DATA BASE applications. il 

• The ATtack series, with full hardware protection, virtual memory 
support and 16 MB address space, makes true multi-user UNIX 
available to the IBM PC user. 

• Runs most PC DOS compatible programs without modification 

• Runs most software 4 to 10 times faster 

• Works with most PC Bus compatible expansion boards 

• Multi-user applications supported 

• Intel 80286 processor running 4, 6, 8 MHz 

• 80287 companion math co-processor 

• Supports vitrual memory and hardware protection 

• Expansion connector for future growth and OEM applications 

• 640K memory capacity onboard, 4 meg with expansion. 

The following are registered trade marks: IBM PC-XT is a registered trade mark oi International 

Business Machines. UNIX is a registered trade mark of Bell Laboratories. ATtack series is a trade 

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SPECIFICATIONS SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE. 


4 


The ATtack is bus compatible with the IBM PC. The hardware 
includes a state machine to generate 8088 timing. By replacing the 
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bus. This allows the ATtack to run most software without special disks 
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space ... it already resides there. 

Aftek ATtack is basically a plug and play productivity machine. All 
the necessary firmware is provided on the board such that the ATtack 
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the fast 16 Bit memory. The 80286 operation is virtually transparent, 
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ATtack board prices with 
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U.8. FUNDS 


To order in U.S.A. or Canada 
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PRIME DEALER DISTRIBUTOR TERRITORIES AVAILABLE. OEM CALLS INVITED. 


Inquiry 337 


FEBRUARY 1985 •BYTE 391 



















BYTE. 

International Trader To The 
World Micro Market 


If you’ve been waiting for the lines of 
communication to open up in the 
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wasting your time. BYTE is not only in 
touch with the market: BYTE is the market. 
We communicate regularly with the top 
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If you need a communications link to impact 
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call your BYTE sales representative now. 

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‘Source: 1984 Subscriber Profile 

For subscription information in Europe, call 
■ I'll James Hay in England: (0628) 2341. 


For advertising information, call: 


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Hans Csokor 

75 76 84 

Israel 

Gurit Gepner 

866 561 321 39 

W. Germany 

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Spain 

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Sweden 

Andrew Karnig 

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581-9811 

U.S.A. 

Peter Huestis 

(603) 924-9281 


When Byte Speaks Micro, 
The World Listens. 

THE SMALL SYSTEMS JOURNAL 


392 B Y T E • FEBRUARY 1985 











CIRCUIT CELLAR FEEDBACK 


Conducted by Steve Garcia 

Term-Mite for Visually 
Impaired 

Dear Steve. 

I am looking into the possibility of 
assembling a word-processing system for 
someone who is visually impaired and can 
read only oversize type. My thought is to 
couple a terminal with oversize characters 
to a machine like the Morrow Micro Deci¬ 
sion, which works with an external ter¬ 
minal. Could your Tferm-Mite ST Smart Ter¬ 
minal be configured with a character grid 
of 12 lines by 40 columns of double-height 
and double-width characters? Do you 
know of any other terminals that produce 
oversize characters? 

I would greatly appreciate an answer to 
these questions and any other suggestions 
you have regarding computing for the 
visually impaired. 

Steven Ebstein 
Cambridge. MA 

The Term-Mite ST Smart Terminal (de¬ 
scribed in January and February 1984) 
has attributes to allow double-height and 
double-width characters. It is therefore 
possible to create the 12-line by 4 0-col - 
umn display you desire. 

Several terminals on the market that 
feature double-height/double-width char¬ 
acter sizes include the Ergo 301 from 
Micro-Term Inc., 1314 Hanley Industrial 
Court. St. Louis. MO 63144. (314) 968- 
8151: the ET80 from Tec Inc.. 2727 North 
Fairview Ave.. TUcson, AZ 85705. (602) 
792-2230: and the TeleVideo 970 from 
TeleVideo Systems Inc.. 1170 Morse Ave.. 
Sunnyvale. CA 94086. (408) 745-7760. 

Many graphics terminals are available 
that allow custom programming of char¬ 
acter sizes, but they are considerably 
more expensive (several thousands of 
dollars). If double-size characters are not 
adequate, either a terminal of this type 
or a dedicated computer with graphics 
capability will be needed.— Steve 

Line Protection 


Dear Steve. 

After reading your December 1983 ar¬ 
ticle. I decided to install some MOVs 
(metal-oxide varistors) in my power strips 


for my computer systems. When I pur¬ 
chased my computer. I bought a General 
Electric Spike Protector from the hardware 
store (for $19.95—and I thought radio 
tubes had the highest markup in the elec¬ 
tronics industry). I can see that this is iden¬ 
tical to the Radio Shack model pictured 
in your article. However. I realized that this 
would not afford me the full protection 
you recommended. 

1 decided, after reading your article, to 
take it apart to see what it contained. 1 
found a GE V170LA10A MOV connected 
in series with a Microtemp 4168A1 tem¬ 
perature-cutoff device. How does this 
device function in this circuit? 

My local electronics-supply store does 
not carry GE parts but had the RCA equiv¬ 
alents. I decided upon the SK53, which is 
equivalent to the GE V130LA20A. This is 
because I have several items plugged into 
my power strip, and I didn't want to take 
the chance of underprotecting it. The SK 
(and the ECG) catalogs list temperature 
devices, but I did not know which one to 
get nor how to install it (one for each 
MOV?), so I left them out for now. 1 would 
like to know if I need to install these cutoffs 
and how I should go about it. 

I would also like to know how to build 
my own power strip that would filter out 
line noise, because my Apple He causes 
my wireless telephone to go crazy when¬ 
ever graphics or flashing text is being 
displayed on the screen. I don't believe 
that the interference is RF-transmitted 
because the phone is two rooms away. 
Also, the phone is in its cradle at the time 
and is supposed to be immune to outside 
transmissions. Would a line filter help in 
this instance? The Radio Shack filter, part 
number 273-100, doesn't seem to be avail¬ 
able any more—none of the stores in my 
area have it. 

I look forward to your excellent articles 
every month, and although some are 
above me (I'm an audio/video expert), I 
still enjoy reading them. Keep warm up 
there in Connecticut and keep the articles 
coming! 

Robert M. Deano 
New Orleans. LA 

MOVs usually fail by shorting. The tem¬ 
perature-cutoff device in series with the 


MOV is designed to open in the event of 
an MOV failure. A fuse will serve the 
same purpose and should be installed in 
series with the MOV. 

In either case, the protection device 
should function before the MOV casing 
ruptures. If you are in an area where 
lightning strikes are not too frequent, the 
SK53 or GE V130LA20A MOVs are suit¬ 
able. Use a "slow-blow" series fuse rated 
at no more than 15 A. 

Before applying line filters to your 
Apple He. be sure that the cause of radia¬ 
tion is not ungrounded leads to your 
monitor or disk drives. Often, these leads 
can act as an antenna and radiate 
spurious signals. 

Several manufacturers supply power¬ 
line filters that are suitable for your ap¬ 
plications. They include 

Corcom Inc. 

1600 Winchester Rd. 

Libertyville. IL 60048 
(312) 680-7400 
Type 5VK1 or 5VK3 

Cornell-Dubilier Electronics 
150 Avenue L 
Newark. NJ 07105 
(201) 589-7500 
Type APF51IL 

Delta Electronics Industry USA 
1355 Yosemite Way 
Hayward. CA 94545 
(415) 785-5231 
Type 05DBAG5 

Potter Company 
POB 337 

Wesson. MS 39191 
(601) 643-2215 
Type 600A 5 

These filters are equivalent to the Radio 
Shack part number 273-100. Write the 
manufacturers for additional information 
and the address of your nearest supplier. 
—Steve 

Speech Synthesis 


Dear Steve, 

I thoroughly enjoyed your article "Build 
a Third-Generation Phonetic Speech Syn- 

(continued) 


COPYRIGHT© 1985 STEVEN A. CIARCIA. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 393 








ClARCIA FEEDBACK 


thesizer" in the March 1984 issue. I would 
like to bring attention to two comments 
in the article. On page 36. you said: ‘Most 
text-to-speech routines don't let you 
modify the rule tables or expand the 
number of exceptions’’ My company 
Spectrum Projects, markets a voice synthe¬ 
sizer for the Radio Shack Color Computer; 
it costs $69.95 and includes in its text-to- 
speech software a word manager that lets 
you construct and edit custom dictio¬ 
naries. It also prints the phonemes of a 
word, which lets you try different spellings 
to get better pronunciation and then have 
hard-copy printouts to review before add¬ 
ing the words to the dictionary. Finally, the 
product pronounces each alphanumeric 
key as it is pressed—an aid for the visual¬ 
ly impaired. 

On page 40. you said: “I haven't men¬ 
tioned many uses for speech synthesis, 
but I'm sure you have a few ideas for what 
you could do with a speech synthesizer." 
Spectrum Projects also markets a program 
called Tbrmtalk that allows the visually im¬ 
paired to communicate using low-cost 
equipment ($159 for a 16K-byte Color 
Computer II. $69 for the Spectrum Voice 
Pak. and $39 for Tbrmtalk). A blind 
customer of mine is thrilled that he can 
now get stock quotes from Dow lones 
using my products. 

Bob Rosen 
Spectrum Projects 
93-15 86th Dr. 

Woodhaven, NY 11421 

Thank you very much for your letter 
and the data on your Voice Pak speech 
synthesizer and related software. The 
product sounds quite impressive, espe¬ 
cially the price! 

The ability to modify the rules of 
speech is an excellent feature that 
enables greater accuracy in pronuncia¬ 
tion. The Sweet Talker speech-synthesis 
algorithm is a proprietary package and 
lacks that feature. 

Your software is very comprehensive 
and allows the Voice Pak to be used in 
an integrated fashion. Termtalk is espe¬ 
cially useful for the visually impaired. 

Thanks again for the information. It’s 
nice to see others promoting speech-syn¬ 
thesis applications.— Steve 

Not Just for IBM 


Dear Steve. 

I have a new Columbia 1600-4. This 
desktop model is considered to be an IBM 
PC-compatible computer. Would the 
TYump Card work in it? 


I also have a North Star Horizon, about 
four years old. on which I run BASIC 
programs—some under North Star DOS 
and some such as WordStar under CP/M. 
The Horizon has a Z80-A chip, and I am 
wondering whether the Zilog Z8001 can 
run Z80 programs. In other words, is the 
8000 or 8001 upward-compatible with the 
Z80 instruction set. and does it constitute 
what could be considered part of a family 
of chips with the 8001 simply being more 
advanced, powerful, and able to handle 
16 bits? 

Wolcott Toll 

Newtown. CT 

The Z800I does not have the same in¬ 
struction set as the Z80 and is not direct¬ 
ly compatible with your Z80 programs. 
The Trump Card does, however, have a 
CP/M 2.2 software emulator that will run 
Z80 programs like WordStar. SuperCalc. 
and Multiplan. To use your Z80 programs, 
they must first be transferred to a PC- 
DOS or MS-DOS disk and given a file¬ 
name extension of CMD to differentiate 
them from 8088 COM files. This can be 
accomplished in several ways. The easiest 
way to transfer your files is to connect 
the RS-232C ports on your computers 
and use communication software to send 
and receive the files. 

The Trump Card should be compatible 
with your Columbia 1600-4, but if you 
have any questions contact Sweet Micro 
Systems. 50 Freeway Dr., Cranston. Rl 
02910, (401) 461-0530- Steve 

Temperature over 
Power Lines 


Dear Steve. 

I read your article “Build a Power-Line 
Carrier-Current Modem" in the August 
1983 issue. I’d like to build a data- 
collection network that would send tem¬ 
perature information over 120-V power 
lines to a host computer for storage. The 
temperature sensors would send informa¬ 
tion only when requested to do so by the 
host. In what form is the information best 
sent and which is cheapest? 

Nasser Audatala 
Cleveland, OH 

Most low-cost serial-communication 
systems use ASCII characters to transmit 
information. These systems require a 
method of generating the ASCII charac¬ 
ter and converting it to serial data on the 
transmitting end and a method of receiv¬ 
ing the serial data on the receiving end 
and converting it to some useful format. 


Computers and dumb terminals are typi¬ 
cally used to send and receive the infor¬ 
mation in these systems. 

However, in a data-collection system of 
the type that you indicate, data transfer 
can be handled in a much simpler man¬ 
ner. The temperature data can be ac¬ 
quired and converted to a frequency pro¬ 
portional to the temperature using a VCO 
(voltage-controlled oscillator). I pre¬ 
sented a temperature-conversion circuit 
of this type in my article "Build a Com¬ 
puterized Weather Station'' in the 
February 1982 issue. With this type of 
system, the computer on the receiving 
end needs only to determine the fre¬ 
quency and compare it to a calibration 
table to determine the remote tempera¬ 
ture.— Steve 

Trump Card for S-I00 Bus 


Dear Steve. 

I am an engineer forced into retirement 
by a heart condition several years ago. 
However. I have been interested in elec¬ 
tronics since about 1927 when my father 
got involved in that field, and it has been 
a hobby of mine ever since. I took several 
night courses at our technical school in 
digital electronics and computers. I in¬ 
vested in a Heathkit H-100. which is the 
8085/8088 hybrid using the S-100 bus. I 
purchased a couple of 8-inch double¬ 
sided double-density MPI drives and did 
all my own interfacing. 

Adapting your TYump Card looks rather 
challenging, as I would have to wire-wrap 
the board for the S-100 bus. This would 
not deter me, but before I start I would 
like to know whether there would be a lot 
of program adaptation required to use the 
software that you offer with this system. 
Is the BASIC compiler suitable for Micro¬ 
soft BASIC or, as Heath/Zenith terms its 
version. ZBASIC? I am not familiar with the 
version that IBM supplies (BASICA). and 
my concern is whether the compiler is 
specific to the IBM version or if it is 
general purpose. Would you venture to 
say how the Z8001 would compare in ex¬ 
ecution speed on mathematical programs 
compared to the 8087 coprocessor? 

E. G. Hrdlicka 
Edmonton. Alberta, 
Canada 

With your background in interfacing, 
you should have little trouble in convert¬ 
ing the Trump Card circuit to operate on 
the H-100 bus. and it should be an inter¬ 
esting project. 

The software-initializing routine called 


394 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 








CIARCIA FEEDBACK 


LDSYS and the device driver used by 
PC-DOS will probably have to be 
modified to run on your system. The 
documentation that accompanies the 
software does not describe these 
routines in any great detail, and this may 
be a problem area depending on your 
programming skills. You will also need a 
5'A-inch disk drive that can read PC-DOS 
or MS-DOS disks, since this is the only 
format for which you will be able to find 
available software. 

I am not familiar with ZBAS 1C syntax, 
but if it is close to MBASIC, written by 
Microsoft for standard CP/M machines, 
it will be highly compatible with BASICA, 
since MBASIC is practically a subset of 
BASICA. 

The Trump Card will have a higher 
throughput in most applications than the 
8088/8087 combination. This is because 
the 8087 is used only to perform numeric 
computations, which usually comprise 
only a small part of most BASIC pro¬ 
grams. The advantages of the 8087 will 
be noted in programs that predominantly 
do number crunching— Steve 


Trump Card and CP/M-80 


Dear Steve, 

I currently have an IBM PC and a Xerox 
820 printer. With the arrival of your TYump 
Card, I'd like to consolidate as much soft¬ 
ware as possible in the IBM. Question: 
How good is the CP/M-80 emulator ac¬ 
companying your TYump Card? Also, is 
there a list of commercial CP/M-80 pro¬ 
grams that can run under it? Can it han¬ 
dle all BDOS function calls? Thank you for 
any information you have. 

John M. Allred 

FPO Miami, FL 

The CP/M-80 emulator used with the 
Thump Card can run many programs writ¬ 
ten for a standard CP/M 2.2 environment. 
Typical programs that have been tested 
on the Thump Card are WordStar, Super- 
Calc, and Multiplan. 

Since the CP/M-80 emulator is really a 
Z8001 program that interprets Z80 code 
and emulates it on the Z8001, the per¬ 
formance of the interpreted programs 
suffers a little in speed of execution. This 


reduction may or may not be noticeable 
to you, depending on how fast your own 
CP/M system is running. 

The emulator handles 28 of the 37 
CP/M 2.2 function calls. The function calls 
not supported are 3 Reader Input, 4 
Punch Output, 7 Get I/O Byte, 8 Set I/O 
Byte, 27 Get Alloc Addr, 28 Write Protect, 
30 File Attributes, 31 Disk Param Addr, 
and 32 User Codes. In addition, the stan¬ 
dard CP/M BIOS calls dealing with the 
disk, the reader and the punch are not 
supported by the emulator .—Steve ■ 


Over the years I have presented many dif¬ 
ferent projects in BYTE. I know many of you 
have built them and are making use of them 
in many ways. 

I am interested in hearing from any of you 
telling me what you’ve done with these proj¬ 
ects or how you may have been influenced by 
the basic ideas. Write me at Circuit Cellar Feed¬ 
back. POB 582, Glastonbury. CT 06033 and 
fill me in on your applications. All letters and 
photographs become the property of Steve 
Ciarcia and cannot be returned. 


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Inquiry 282 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 395 












Super assemblers 
plus the world’s 
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Z-80 

Macroassembler $49.50 

Power for larger programs! This 
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• powerful linker that will link up to 
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Code Converter (to convert all 
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8086/88 Assembler 
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Available for MSDOS, PCDOS, or 
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System requirements for all pro¬ 
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Cross Assembler Special Features 

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names, standard Zilog and Z-80 
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8748 —standard Intel and Z-80 
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8051 —512 User defined register 
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6800 Family —absolute or 
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6502 —Standard syntax or Z-80 
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396 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 




8086 and Z-8000 XASM includes Source Code Translators 



Z-80 

CP/M® 

ZILOG 

SYSTEM 8000 
UNIX 

IBM P.C. 
8086/88 
MSDOS 

IBM P.C. 
8086/88 
CP/M 86 

OLIVETTI 

M-20 

PCOS 

8086/88 ASM 



$ 99.50 

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8086/88 XASM 

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80186 XASM new 

199.50 

750.00 

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32000 (all) XASM new 

299.50 

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299.50 

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68000,08,10XASM new 

199.50 

750.00 

199.50 

199.50 

199.50 

Z-8000® ASM 


750.00 



299.50 

Z-8000 XASM 

199.50 


199.50 

199.50 


Z-80 ASM 

49.50 





Z-80 XASM 


500.00 

99.50 

99.50 

99.50 

Z-8 XASM 

99.50 

500.00 

99.50 

99.50 

99.50 

6301 (CMOS) new 

99.50 

500.00 

99.50 

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6500/11 XASM new 

99.50 

500.00 

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6502 XASM 

99.50 

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99.50 

99.50 

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65C02(CM0S) XASM new 

99.50 

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99.50 

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6800,2,8 XASM 

99.50 

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6801,03 XASM 

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6804 XASM new 

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8748 XASM 

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8051 XASM 

199.50 

750.00 

199.50 

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8080 XASM 

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8085 XASM 

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8096 XASM new 

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Phone_Ext- 

Make and model of computer 

system_ 

□ C.O.D. (2500ADpays C.O.D. charges) 

□ VISA or MasterCard#, Exp. Date (mo./yr.) 


Signature 


TO ORDER. Simply circle the product or 
products you want in the price columns above, 
enter the subtotal at the bottom of that column 
and add up your total order. Don’t forget 
shipping/handling. 

Check one: 

□ 8" Single Density 

□ 5'A" Osborne 

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PROGRAMMING INSIGHT 


SIMULTANEOUS 
EQUATIONS WITH 
LOTUS 1-2-3 


by Jan-Henrik Johansson 


An example from macroeconomics 


SPREADSHEETS ARE amazingly use¬ 
ful in a number of applications. In this 
article. I will show how macroeco¬ 
nomic models can be formulated as 
simple spreadsheet programs as long 
as they can be defined using just 
linear simultaneous equations. I will 
then go on to show how to solve such 
equations numerically using standard 
spreadsheet commands. 

My inspiration for this article came 
after reading an article by Patrick E. 
McGuire (see reference 3). He pub¬ 
lished a simple BASIC program that 
solved simultaneous equations 
analytically, and he therefore seemed 
to have solved the problem I was in¬ 
terested in. But programming every¬ 
thing in BASIC from now on seemed 
to me to be a step backward. Was 
there a more general approach? I will 
illustrate a different method by using 
only the familiar spreadsheet Lotus 
1-2-3. I will use it to solve systems of 
simultaneous linear equations 
through iteration (successive recalcu¬ 
lations) rather than through suc¬ 
cessive transformations of the equa¬ 
tions. The technique demonstrated 
here is in fact quite general and can 


also be applied to other spreadsheets 
and to many other types of models. 

A Famous 

Macroeconomic Model 

Before describing the solution tech¬ 
nique in detail, let me describe the 
problem. An area where systems of 
simultaneous equations (even very 
large ones) have become an essential 
vehicle for formulating and analyzing 
relationships is macroeconomics. 
Macroeconomic models describe 
global economic behavior of nations 
and groups of nations. Many models 
with hundreds of equations have 
been developed in efforts to analyze 
and project the economic perfor¬ 
mance of. for example, the United 
States. One of the first economists to 


\an-Henrik lohansson (11123 Saffold W ay. 
R eston, VA 22090) is a manager in the 
World Bank. He is interested in the use of 
microcomputers for development in the third 
world. The views and interpretations in this 
article are those of the author and should not 
be attributed to the World Bank, its affiliate 
organizations, or to any individual acting on 
their behalf. 


develop major macroeconomic 
models for the U.S.. using simulta¬ 
neous equations as his analytical tool, 
was Professor Lawrence Klein of the 
Wharton School of the University of 
Pennsylvania. His classic model of the 
U.S. consists of a set of 20 simulta¬ 
neous equations. The work was done 
in the early 1950s (see reference 2). 

As our example. I am using an 
earlier and slightly simpler version 
known as “Klein's model I" (see 
reference 1). which I will formulate 
and run in Lotus 1-2-3.1 will then show 
how to solve this model through itera¬ 
tion, using nothing but standard Lotus 
1-2-3 commands. The example is im¬ 
portant because it represents a type 
of application where the need to 
solve simultaneous equations effi¬ 
ciently has continued to be a key tech¬ 
nical problem for economists around 
the world. However, you do not need 
to be an economist to understand the 
technique itself. I will ignore the 
economics and concentrate instead 
on demonstrating a general method- 
expecting the method to be applica¬ 
ble to other problems as well. On the 

( continued ) 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 399 







PROGRAMMING INSIGHT 


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other hand, if you want to know more 
about macroeconomic models, refer¬ 
ence 4 is a good book. All the models 
described there can be handled by 
the techniques described in this 
article. 

I will first define the model by using 
standard college algebra and then 
verify that the equations are circular. 
The circularity is what makes this ex¬ 
ample interesting. 1 will then translate 
the equations into an equivalent set 
of spreadsheet formulas. T&ble 1 
shows the equations in algebraic 
form. This version of the model has 
six equations, each defining an eco¬ 
nomic variable in terms of some other 
economic variables. The equations for 
C(t), l(t), and U/(f) have previously been 
estimated from historical data using 
regression. The equations for YR(t). 
r(f). and K(t) are identity relationships. 
To see the circularity, notice that 7(0 
is defined in terms of K(t) and that K(t) 
is defined in terms of K(t-\) and 7(t)— 
the variable we started with. The 
equations are therefore circular. If we 
take a closer look, we will find other 
circularities in the set of equations as 
well. 

But there is more: not only is this 
set of equations circular, it is also 
recursive. That is, the solution to the 
set of equations for a particular time 
period depends on the solution of the 
same equations for preceding time 
periods. In this particular model, only 
one preceding time period is needed 
(referring to, for example, K(t- 1)). 
However, it is quite common that one 


has to go back in time more than one 
time period to define the model. Of 
course, the recursion must stop at 
some point in the past. Therefore, in¬ 
stead of a reference to an earlier 
period, we need an initial numeric 
value to start the process. 

One last point regarding the 
algebraic formulation of the model: 
the equations make use of three 
variables that have no equations. 
They are G(t), and P(t). These 
variables are input data. In fact, they 
are constants, although they vary from 
one year to the next. These three in¬ 
put variables are said to be ex¬ 
ogenous (external to the model), 
while the six variables computed by 
the model are endogenous (internal 
to the model). We now have a model 
and a nomenclature to describe it. 
Let's now translate it to Lotus 1-2-3. 

The reformulation of the equations 
in table 1 as a spreadsheet is straight¬ 
forward: table 2 displays the formulas 
in columns B. C. and D of the spread¬ 
sheet. The spreadsheet formulas are 
in fact almost identical to the ones in 
table 1, except that we have reserved 
extra rows for the exogenous vari¬ 
ables G(t), W'(t), and P(t) as well as for 
the time period YR(t). No typical 
spreadsheet coordinates are shown 
because I have named every cell in 
column D by the name of the corre¬ 
sponding variable. If a formula ref¬ 
erences a cell that has a name, Lotus 
1-2-3 automatically replaces the nor¬ 
mal coordinate notation by the name 

( continued ) 


Table 1: Klein’s model I. 

Behavioral equations: 

Consumption function 

C(t) = B0 + B1 *P(t) + B2*(W + W')(t) + B3*P(t -1) + ul 

Investment function 

l(t) = B4 + B5*P(t) + B6*P(t - 1) + B7*K(t - 1) + u2 

Demand for labor 

W(t) = B8 + B9*(Y + T - W')(t) + B10*(Y + T - W')(t - 1) + B11*t + u3 

Identities: 

Taxes 

T(t) = C(t) + l(t) + G(t) - Y (t) 

Income after tax 

Y(t) = W'(t) + W(t) + P(t) 

Capital stock 

K(t) = K(t - 1) + l(t) 

Exogenous data: 

Government expenditure (G), 

Government wage bill (W') and 

Profits (P) 

Regression coefficients: B0 - B11. 

Stochastic disturbances: ul, u2, and u3. 



Inquiry 177 























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FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 401 


Inquiry 339 



















































PROGRAMMING INSIGHT 


of the cell. This makes the formulas 
more readable and is a practical 
necessity for bigger models. As a 
special trick, I have given names like 
K(— 1) to the cells in column C (cor¬ 
responding to period 1). 

The net result is that Lotus 1-2-3 
displays all formulas in a notation that 
is familiar to economists and almost 
identical to that of table 1. We thus 
have six equations with six unknowns 
for each period. Because formulas for 
subsequent periods are structurally 
identical to the ones in column D, it 
is sufficient to list only one column in 
order to display the logic of the 
model. But to solve the model, we must 
explicitly repeat the formulas in col¬ 
umn D for each time period we are 
interested in. 

Because the formulas for different 
periods reference each other, a solu¬ 
tion to the model must satisfy all for¬ 
mulas for all periods at the same time. 
In fact, if we wrote down an algebraic 
formulation of this model in a non¬ 
recursive form, the total number of 
equations would equal the number of 
equations (six) for each period times 
the number of time periods minus 
four initialized values for the first time 
period. Solving the model for, let us 
say, 24 periods therefore amounts to 
solving a system of linear equations 
with 140 unknowns. The lesson is that 
our rather simple spreadsheet exam¬ 
ple has revealed considerable under¬ 
lying complexity and a respectable 


computational problem. Considering 
recursion and circularity, how do we 
go about calculating the solution? 

Gauss-Seidel 

A common method used to solve 
complex systems of linear equations 
is the Gauss-Seidel iterative method, 
which roughly goes like this: take an 
arbitrary value (often 0) and use it to 
initialize one or several of the 
unknowns in order to break all cir¬ 
cularities in the system of equations. 
Now compute the rest of the 
unknowns through simple substitu¬ 
tion. Obviously, what we have now is 
not a solution because at least one 
unknown has been given an arbitrary 
value. Because of the circular nature 
of the equations, however, we can 
now compute this variable from the 
other variables we just computed. In 
so doing, we will get a better initial 
value to use in a second round with 
the other unknowns. Now repeat the 
process a number of times. During 
each iteration the values tend to 
change less and less. After a certain 
number of iterations, they do not 
change any more. The process has 
converged, and the values are stable. 
We have reached the solution. 

Solving equations through iterations 
is not something one would like to do 
by hand, but a computer can do it, 
and Lotus 1-2-3 does it quite nicely. 
The traditional Gauss-Seidel method 
may sometimes require many itera¬ 


tions to converge and may therefore 
be quite slow, even on a computer. It 
is not unusual if 40 to 100 iterations 
are needed before a solution is found. 
The better we are at guessing the ini¬ 
tial values, the fewer iterations we 
need for convergence. In particular, if 
we already have solved the equations 
once and we then introduce a slight 
change to the exogenous data or to 
the equations, the old solution is likely 
to be a good first guess. Taking it as 
our set of initial values (instead of ar¬ 
bitrary numbers), we will need fewer 
iterations to reach a new solution. 

A spreadsheet gives us the oppor¬ 
tunity to take advantage of this fact, 
because spreadsheets like Lotus 1-2-3 
always store the results of the last 
computation (the last solution) with 
the formulas. When using a spread¬ 
sheet, we will always start the itera¬ 
tions from an approximation that is 
probably close to the solution. The 
only exception to this rule is the first 
time we enter the formulas. By going 
in small steps from solution to solu¬ 
tion, we can explore the performance 
of our model in a way that is fast 
because we have reduced the total 
number of computations needed. 

Fortunately, this process matches 
well with the way people actually use 
models. Foj example, we may be in¬ 
terested in how sensitive exports are 
to small changes in exchange rates or 
import tariffs. Or we may want to see 

( continued ) 


Table 2: A formulation of Klein I in Lotus 1-2-3. The exogenous variables G and W' have been given a 5 percent and 3 
percent annual growth rate, respectively. Use of the information in this table is explained in the text box. 


Column B 

Column C 

Column D 

B1 

YR 

— 

Cl 


1 

D1 

+ YR( - 1) + 1 

B2 



C2 



D2 


B3 

C 

= 

C3 


1.5 

D3 

- 2.0 + 0.2* P + 0.55*(W +W') + 0.26 *P(- 1) 

B4 

1 

= 

C4 


3.0 

D4 

+ 1.0 + 0.78*P - 0.05 *P( - 1) - 0.02 *K( - 1) 

B5 

G 

= 

C5 


5.0 

D5 

+ G(- 1)*1.05 

B6 



C6 



D6 


B7 

W 

= 

C 7 


3.0 

D7 

-1.0 + 0.24*(Y + T-W') + 0.2*(Y(-1) + T(-1)-W'(-1)) + 0.1*YR 

B8 

W' 

= 

C8 


1.0 

D8 

+ W'(-1)*1.03 

B9 

P 

- 

C9 


3.0 

D9 

3 

B10: 


CIO: 


D10: 

B11: T 

= 

Cl 1 : 


Dll: + C + 1 + G - Y 

B12: Y 

= 

C12: 


D12: +W + W' + P 

B13: K 

= 

C13: 

5.0 

D13: +K(-1) + I 


402 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 














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PROGRAMMING INSIGHT 


Table 3: Ihe solution to Klein l for 10 time periods using the data from table 2. 





Klein’s model 1 

YR = 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

Consumption 

C = 

1.500 

1.620 

1.784 

1.937 

2.094 

2.256 

2.423 

2.596 

2.775 

2.961 

Investment 

1 = 

3.000 

3.090 

3.028 

2.968 

2.908 

2.850 

2.793 

2.737 

2.683 

2.629 

Government expenditure 

G = 

5.000 

5.250 

5.513 

5.788 

6.078 

6.381 

6.700 

7.036 

7.387 

7.757 

Private wage bill 

W = 

3.000 

3.043 

3.309 

3.557 

3.809 

4.070 

4.339 

4.618 

4.907 

5.206 

Government wage bill 

W ' = 

1.000 

1.030 

1.061 

1.093 

1.126 

1.159 

1.194 

1.230 

1.267 

1.305 

Profits 

P = 

3.000 

3.000 

3.000 

3.000 

3.000 

3.000 

3.000 

3.000 

3.000 

3.000 

Taxes 

T = 

2.500 

2.887 

2.954 

3.044 

3.145 

3.259 

3.384 

3.521 

3.672 

3.836 

Income after tax 

Y = 

7.000 

7.073 

7.370 

7.649 

7.935 

8.229 

8.533 

8.848 

9.173 

9.510 

Capital stock 

K = 

5.000 

8.090 

11.118 

14.086 16.994 

19.844 

22.637 

25.375 

28.057 

30.686 

Regression coefficients: 


-C- 


-1 - 


- W - 








B0= -2.000 B4 

= 1.000 B8 = 

: -1.000 







B1 = 0.200 B5 

= 0.780 B9 = 

= 0.240 







B2= 0.550 B6 

= -0.050 B10 

= 0.200 







B3 = 0.260 B7 

= -0.020 B11 

= 0.100 






what happens to the model when it 
is exposed to a shock, such as 
quadrupling the oil price or barring all 
sales of grain to the Soviet Union. 

The Real Thing: 

9000 Unknowns 

Experimenting with Klein's model I 
shows that when changing exogenous 
variables we need only 3 to 9 itera¬ 
tions to reach a new solution from an 
old one. Of course, a drastic change 
of exogenous variables may require 
more iterations. For 24 years, one 
iteration takes less than 7 seconds on 
my Compaq. With an average of 5 
iterations required to reach the solu¬ 
tion, the microcomputer has solved a 
system of simultaneous equations 


that has 140 unknowns in about half 
a minute. A printout showing the 
results for the first 10 years can be 
found in table 3. 

1 have experimented with very large 
models with up to 450 endogenous 
and 100 exogenous variables cover¬ 
ing a time span of 20 years. Such a 
system has almost 9000 unknowns! 
One complete iteration still takes only 
about 22 seconds, and only 4 to 10 
iterations are required for con¬ 
vergence. This is fully adequate for 
practical work with realistic models 
and makes our simple spreadsheet 
approach surprisingly competitive 
when compared even to large main¬ 
frame software packages specifically 
designed to solve macroeconomic 


models. What we have seen is a 
synergism. Iteration is an easy and 
slow method to solve equations. But 
because a spreadsheet by default 
makes a smart guess, we see a drastic 
improvement in efficiency, allowing us 
to attack much tougher problems 
than before. 

However, a problem relates to find¬ 
ing a new solution to the system of 
equations. In the case of a small 
model, like Klein's model I, there is no 
question whether the model has con¬ 
verged or not. We can simply look at 
the screen and see what happens 
when we give a calculation command. 
When nothing happens, we are done. 
However, it will not take long before 
we have a model that does not fit on 


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Dataplotter 

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I I L L I S E C O * 


404 B Y T E • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 175 






























PROGRAMMING INSIGHT 


Klein’s Model I 
in Lotus 1 - 2-3 


T his is a complete step-by-step 
example of how to build and 
execute the model. First, you set up the 
worksheet. When entering the model, 
use the data in table 2. 

1. Type in the variable names in cells 
B1 to B13. 

2. Type in the initial values in cells Cl 
to C13. 

3. Using the variable name in column 
B and the Lotus /RNC command, name 
all the corresponding cells Cl to Cl 3 
as lagged variables (i.e.. "Y7?(— 1)." 
"C(-l)," etc.) and name all cells D1 to 
D13 simply with the variable names 
(i.e.. "YR‘/ "C etc.). 

4. Format the range C3..D13 to 
display three decimals. 

5. Now enter the model equations in¬ 
to cells D1 to D13. Because cell names 
have been created earlier, equations 
can now be entered exactly as they are. 

6 . Copy the range D1. ,D13 all the way 
to column H. Also, copy Dll and D12 
to Cll and Cl2. respectively. This ex¬ 
tends the model to six annual periods. 

7. Hit the Calc key (F9) several times 
and watch the values for year six in col¬ 
umn H. If the model has been entered 
correctly, you will see the worksheet 
converge. 

8 . lb run further simulations, change 
some of the initial values. Convergence 
control is still manual. 

Automatic convergence control is next. 
We will use wages in year six (cell H7) 
to check for convergence. 


9. Type the formula + H7 into cell Al. 
This will cause Lotus 1-2-3 to start every 
new iteration by copying the result of 
the preceding iteration to Al. The value 
of H7 is then recomputed. The dif¬ 
ference between Al and H7 is a 
measure of how close we are to a 
solution. 

10. Using / RNC, give the cell Al 5 the 
name " \ S" and enter the test for con¬ 
vergence: 7X1@ABS(A1 -H7) >0.001^ 
{CALCJ/XG \ S'v Translated into 
English, this macro says: if the absolute 
value of the difference between two iterations 
for wages in year six is greater than a certain 
tolerance (0.001), recompute the spreadsheet 
and reevaluate the macro again: otherwise, you 
have found the solution. That is, if the con¬ 
dition is not met, Lotus 1-2-3 will loop 
over the macro and continue recom¬ 
puting the worksheet until changes are 
smaller than the tolerance. 

11. To ensure that the value of Al is 
computed before H7, i.e., that the value 
of the old iteration is stored, type 
/WGRC. 

You are now ready to run a simulation. 
The macro we just created will 
automatically control the iteration pro¬ 
cess for you. 

12. Change the initial value of some 
variable, for example, change G in C5 
from 5.0 to 3.0. 

13. Now execute our macro by typing 
ALT-S. We will see the model converg¬ 
ing and then stop automatically when 
the solution is reached. 


the screen. What we need is some 
kind of convergence-control 
mechanism. The ideal is that Lotus 
1-2-3 keeps iterating until the biggest 
change in any value is smaller than 
some predefined (small) constant. 
Some other spreadsheets (Multiplan, 
for example) have convergence con¬ 
trol built in, which is a real plus. The 
step-by-step example in the text box 
("Klein's Model I in Lotus 1-2-3") con¬ 
tains a simple test for convergence 
written in the macro language of 
Lotus 1-2-3. The one-line macro il¬ 


lustrates the impressive power of the 
macro facility of Lotus 1-2-3. ■ 


REFERENCES 

1. Gujarati, Damodar. Basic Econometrics. 
New York: McGraw-HilL 1978, page 341. 

2. Klein, L. R„ and A. S. Goldberger. An 
Econometric Model of the United States, 
1929-1952. New York: North-Holland. 
1955. 

3. McGuire. Patrick E. "A Gauss-jordan 
Elimination Method Program." BYTE, 
August 1983, page 394. 

4. Taylor. Lance. Macro Models for Develop¬ 
ing Countries. New York: McGraw-Hill. 1979. 



Inquiry 289 


IBM PC 

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STOP resetting by turning off power. 
STOP stressing your hard disk and 
RAM. ELIMINATE the SLOW PC 
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Specify PC or XT. MC/VISA 
Security i6FiaggPiacc 

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Consultants Staten island, ny 10304 
_ (718) 667-1019 _ 


Inquiry 276 


VCemTecN 

PREMIUM COLOR 
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Inquiry 61 

































Dumb. 


Stand-alone programs 
can’t be made to work as a system 
no matter how hard you might try. 


Stand-alone programs 
are fine. Unless, of course, 
you need them to work 
together. Because the sum 
of the parts will never equal 
a whole. 

That’s why even the 
highly touted WordStar/* 


dBase 11“ and 1-2-3,“ pro¬ 
grams don’t make sense 
as a business system. 

They were designed to 
perform very specific appli 
cation functions only, and 
therefore, make miserable 
workmates. 


Fortunately, there’s a 
smart solution. It’s the new 
Smart Software System. 

Smart’s unique “modular 
integration” is the key to 
productivity. It means that 
The Smart Word Processor, 
The Smart Data Manager 


406 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


















Smart. 


The fully integrated 
Smart Software System is designed 
to make the whole office more productive. 


and The Smart Spreadsheet 
with Graphics not only have 
the uncompromising power 
and capacity of these lead¬ 
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but they also have the unpre¬ 
cedented capability to work 
brilliantly together. 


So you can easily transfer 
data and pass commands 
from one to another. Which 
means that you can compile 
financial data, to be included 
in graph-form, within the 
text of a printed report, 
that’s mailed to a list drawn 


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Don’t short change your 
business by attempting to 
squeeze the impossible out 
of a makeshift software 
system. Get Smart, and the 
whole office will thank you. 


Smart is available for the 
IBM PC, PC/XT, PC/AT, 
and compatibles. For informa¬ 
tion call, 800-GET-SMART. 

(In Kansas call, 913-383-1089). 

Smart Software 

from Innovative Software 


*1-2-3” WordStar- and dBase II” are registered trademarks of Lotus Development Corporation. Micro Pro International Corporation and Ashton Tate respectively * 1984 Innovative Software. Inc 


Inquiry 146 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 407 










The Micromint Collection 



TERM MITE ST 

SMART TERMINAL BOARD 


Z8 COMPUTER SYSTEM 


SPEECH PRODUCTS 


Speech Synthesizer IC's 


TERM MITE is a completely self-contained video 
display controller. 



All you need to build a Smart Video Terminal equiva¬ 
lent to the types advertised for $1000 or more is a 
Term-Mite ST circuit board, scanned or parallel key 
board, video monitor and power supply. 

Uses brand new Nat'l Semi NS405 Terminal 
Processor. 

24 lines by 80 characters, 25th reverse-video 
status. 

Upper & lowercase. Line (block) graphics. 

Selectable data rate, parity & display options. 

Reverse video, half intensity, double height & 
width, underline, blinking and/or blank character. 
Separate sync or composite video output. Self Test. 

TERM-MITE ST Video Display Terminal Board 


BCC22 Assembled & Tested.$284 

BCC23 Complete Kit.$244. 


MPX-16 MICROCOMPUTER 
IBM PC COMPATIBLE 



As featured on the cover of BYTE Magazine. Also 
featured in Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar November, 
December 1982 & January 1983 


The Computer with a Split Personality 

- Use it as an IBM PC look alike that directly boots 
PC DOS 2.0 and accepts all expansion boards 
designed for the IBM PC. 

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for all your OEM applications. Just add serial ter¬ 
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CP/M-86. 

Buy the MPX 16 in the form that best meets your 
needs or budget. As a bare board, as a wave soldered 
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Directly boots PC DOS 2.0 and CP/M-86. 

Most I BM PC software executes with no 
modifications. 

- IBM PC bus compatible +9 expansion slots. 

Intel 8088 16-bit microprocessor. 

Optional Intel 8087 math cocprocessor. 

256K bytes on board memory. 

- Up to one megabyte of system memory. 

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2 RS-232C Serial & 3 Parallel I/O ports. 

Disk controller for 5V4" or 8" drives. 

Sixteen levels of vectored interrupts. 


MPX-16 Circuit Board Assembled 
w/64K RAM.$1,200. 

OEM 100 quantity price. 840. 

MPX-16 Circuit Board Assembled 
w/256K RAM.1,400. 

MPX 16 Semi-Kit (wave soldered circuit 
board w/all components) Less ICs. 595. 

Complete Kit of ICs w/256K RAM. 595. 

MPX 16 Unpopulated (bare) PC Board .... 300. 

CP/M-86 Operating System + Manuals. 80. 

MPX 16 Switching Power Supply. 300. 

MPX 16 Technical Reference Manual.50. 

MPX-16 Metal Enclosure with Fan. 225. 

Tandon TM 100-2 Double Sided/Density 
Drive. 300. 

IBM/PC Keyboard Interface Adapter. 100. 


Shipping and handling additional on MPX-16 orders. 


IBM PC is a trademark of International Business Machines Inc. 
CP/M-86 is a trademark of Digital Research Inc. 

Z8 is a trademark of Zilog Inc. 


BASIC System 
Controller 



The Z8 Basic 
System Controller 
is an updated version 
of our popular BCC01. The price has been reduced 
and features added. The entire computer is 4" by 4Vi" 
and includes a tiny BASIC interpreter, up to 6K bytes 
of RAM and EPROM, one RS 232C serial port with 
switchable baud rates and two parallel ports. BASIC 
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be transferred to 2732 EPROMs with an optional 
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Converter and an EPROM programmer. 

Uses Zilog Z8 single chip microprocessor. 

- Data and address buses available for complete 
peripheral expansion 

Can be battery operated. 

Cross assemblers for various computers. New 

BCC11 Assembled & Tested.$149. Low Price 


FORTH Language Version 


With the new Z8 with on board 4K FORTH you can 
program high speed control functions in a few simple 
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applications. 

BCC20 Z8F FORTH Microprocessor chip . $150. 
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(This board is a BCC11 with a BCC20 installed) 
Assembled & Tested... 280. 


Memory, I/O Expansion, 
Cassette Interface 


8K bytes of additional RAM or EPROM. 

Three additional 8 bit parallel ports. 

Cassette interface - 300 baud K.C. Standard. 

- Software real time clock. 

BCC33 w/OK RAM Assembled 8< Tested . . . $150. 
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Eprom Programmer 


Lis' ner 1000 
Voice 

Recognition 

Board 


Uses the new, high 
performance SP1000 
voice recognition chip. 

The LIS' NER 1000 provides voice input capability 
for your computer. The unit functions in the same 
manner as your keyboard, serving as a data entry 
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The LIS' NER 1000 recognition system works 
by analyzing human speech and extracting the 
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APPLE II LIS’ NER 1000 with SP1000 
recognition/synthesis components only 

VR01 Assembled & Tested.S189. 

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VR10 Assembled & Tested.S149. 

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The SC-01 A Speech Synthesizer is a completely self 
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SSI 263 Quantity 19.$42. ea. 

10 99 .$34. ea. 

100.$30. ea. 


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DC01 IBM PC Assembled & Tested.S299. 

DC02 IBM PC Complete Kit.$264. 

DC03 APPLE II Assembled & Tested .... $299. 
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ULTRASONIC RANGING SYSTEM 


The Micromint Sonar Ranging Experimenter's 
Kit is an updated and higher functioning version of 


Transfer BASIC or Assembly Language application 
programs from RAM to 2716 or 2732 EPROM 
Comes with programming & utility routines on 
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Requires Z8 I/O Expansion Board for operation. 

BCC07 Assembled & Tested.$145. 


Analog to Digital Converter 


Uses Analog Devices 7581 1C, 8-channel 8-bit. 

Adds process control capability to the Z8 system 
Over 1,000 conversions per channel per second. 

• Monitors 8 analog signals in one of two 10v Ranges. 

BCC13 Assembled & Tested.$140. 


Serial Expansion Board 


Adds additional RS-232C and opto-isolated 20 ma. 
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Runs at 75 to 19,200 baud in all protocols. 

Comes with iistings of sample serial I/O routines. 

BCC08 Assembled & Tested.$160. 


16K Memory Expansion Board 


Add up to 16K of additional memory, RAM or 
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Accepts 2016, 61 16, 2716, or 2732 memory types. 
Four 16K cards may be installed on the Z8 System 
bringing the total memory to 64K 

BCC14 Assembled & Tested w/4K RAM $120. 


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From Micro Resources 

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Contains five slots complete w/44 pin connectors. 

MB02 Assembled & Tested.$69. 


Triple Voltage Power Supplies 


+5V @ 300 ma. +/-12V@25 ma. 

UPS01 Assembled & Tested.$35. 

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the Polaroid SX-70 Camera sonar ranging circuit 
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TI01 Sonar Ranging Experimenters Kit. . . $60. 


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Microvox Text-to-Speech 
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Micromint's latest 300 Baud Modem Kit is crystal 
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output device and provides speech of unbelievable 
clarity. 

Unlimited vocabulary. 

64 programmable inflection levels. 

6K text-to-speech algorithm. 

Full ASCII character set recognition and echo. 
RS232C and parallel input. 

1000 Character buffer, 3000 optional. 

Adjustable baud rates (75-9600). 

Spelling output mode. 

7 octave music and sound effects. 

On board audio amplifier 8i power supply. 
X-On/X-Off handshaking. 

MV01 Assembled with IK buffer.$349. 

MV02 Complete Kit with IK buffer.$269. 

Add $15.00 for 3K buffer option. 


MICROMINT INC. 561 Willow Avenue. 
Cedarhurst, NY 11516 
To Order: Call Toll Free 1-800-645-3479 
For Information Call: 1-516-374-6793 
Call: Monday-Friday, 9-5 PM 




408 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 





































































































BOOKS RECEIVED 


Adventure into BBC BASIC. 
Miles Ellis and David Ellis. New 
York: lohn Wiley & Sons. 1984, 
328 pages. 17 by 24.8 cm, soft- 
cover. ISBN 0471-90171-7. 
$14.95. 

American University Pro¬ 
grams in Computer Science, 
William W. Lau. ed. Fullerton. 
CA: GGL Educational Press. 
1984; 222 pages. 16 by 23.5 
cm. hardcover, ISBN 0-915751- 
2 5-9. $18. 

Analysis and Simulation 
of Semiconductor Devices. 
Siegfried Selberherr. New 
York: Springer-Verlag, 1984; 

308 pages, 16.8 by 2 5 cm. 
hardcover. ISBN 0387-818006. 
$54. 

Animation, Games, and Sound 
for the Tl 99/4A, Tony Fabbri. 
Englewood Cliffs. NJ: Prentice- 
Hall. 1984; 272 pages. 17.5 by 
23.3 cm, softcover. ISBN 013- 
037227-7. $14.95. 

Apple Logo for Kids. David 
A. Yule. Blue Ridge Summit. 

PA: Ttab Books, 1984; 224 
pages, 18.5 by 23.5 cm, soft- 
cover. ISBN 0-8306-1728-0. 
$11.50. 

Apple to IBM PC Conversion 
Guide. Richard Steck. Glenview, 
IL: Scott. Foresman and Co.. 
1984; 112 pages. 19.3 by 23.5 
cm, softcover. ISBN 0-673- 
18047-6. $11.95. 

THe Apple WordStar Book. 
Jerry Mar. Glenview, IL: Scott, 
Foresman and Co., 1984; 288 
pages. 19 by 22.8 cm, spiral- 
bound. ISBN 0673-15992-2, 
$11.95. 

Applied BASIC for Microcom¬ 
puters. Roy A. Boggs. Reston, 
VA: Reston Publishing, 1984; 

288 pages, 15.3 by 22.8 cm. 
softcover. ISBN 08359-0042-8. 
$16.95. 

Architecture of the 8048. 
Edward W. Page. Beaverton. OR: 
dilithium Press, 1984; 208 


pages. 17.3 by 22.3 cm. soft- 
cover. ISBN 088056-071-1. 
$19.95. 

Art and the Computer. Melvin 
L. Prueitt. New York: McGraw- 
Hill. 1984, 256 pages. 25 by 20 
cm. softcover. ISBN 0-07- 
050899-2. $29.95 

Assembly Language Made 
Easy for the TRS-80, Chao 
Chien. New York: Holt. Rinehart 
and Winston. 1984; 240 pages. 
17.5 by 23.5 cm. softcover. 

ISBN 003-070441-3. $18.45. 

Automata. Languages and 
Programming. Ian Parendaens. 
ed. Lecture Notes in Computer 
Science #172. New York: 
Springer-Verlag. 1984; 536 
pages. 16.5 by 24.3 cm, soft- 
cover. ISBN 0387-13345-3. $22. 

BASIC Fun for the Commo¬ 
dore 64 Beginner. Arthur 
Denzau. Kent Forrest, and 
Robert Parks. Englewood Cliffs. 
NJ: Prentice-Hall. 1984; 256 
pages. 17.5 by 23.3 cm. soft- 
cover. ISBN 0-13-061441-6. 
$19.95. Includes floppy disk. 

A BASIC Primer for the IBM 
Personal Computer: Program¬ 
ming Business Applications. 
Donald B. TVivette. Glenview. IL: 
Scott. Foresman and Co.. 1984; 
208 pages, 19.5 by 23 cm, soft- 
cover. ISBN 0673-15997-3. 
$18.95. 

Bank Street's Family Computer 
Book. Barbara Brenner with 
Mari Endreweit. New York: 
Ballantine Books. 1984; 272 
pages. 13.5 by 20.8 cm. soft- 
cover. ISBN 0345-31367-4. 

$6.95. 

Beepers: 21 Electronic Proi- 

ECTS FOR THE TlMEX/SlNCLAIR 
1000 and 1500. Gordon 
Rockmaker and Stephen Adams. 


New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984; 

112 pages. 13.8 by 20.3 cm, 
spiral-bound, ISBN 007- 
053358-X, $8.95. 

THe Beginner's Computer 
Dictionary, Elizabeth S. 

Wall and Alexander C. Wall. 

New York: Avon Books. 1984; 

80 pages, 13 by 19 cm. soft- 
cover. ISBN 0-380-87114-9. 

$2.25. 

Book Bytes: THe User's Guide 
to 1200 Microcomputer 
Books. 1984 ed.. Cris Popenoe. 
New York: Pantheon Books. 

1984; 240 pages. 21 by 27.5 
cm. softcover, ISBN 0-394- 
72273-6. $9.95. 

Business Decision Making 
with Multjplan. William R. 
Osgood and James F. Molloy Jr. 
Somerville. MA: Curtin & 

London and New York: Van 
Nostrand Reinhold. 1984; 152 
pages. 21.5 by 28 cm. softcover. 
ISBN 0-930764-90-0. $19.95. 

Business Graphics with Lotus 
1-2-3. William R. Osgood and 
Dennis P. Curtin. Somerville. 

MA: Curtin & London and New 
York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. 
1984; 208 pages. 21.5 by 28 cm. 
softcover. ISBN 0-930764-59-5. 
$19.95. 

Business Problem Solving 
with Lotus 1-2-3, James F. 
Molloy Jr. and Dennis P. Curtin. 
Somerville, MA: Curtin & 

London and New York: 

Van Nostrand Reinhold. 1984; 
208 pages, 21.5 by 28 cm. soft- 
cover, ISBN 0-930764-85-4. 
$19.95. 

A Buyer's Guide to Microcom¬ 
puter Business Software, 
Amanda C. Hixson. Reading. 

MA: Addison-Wesley. 1984; 304 
pages, 18 by 23.3 cm. softcover. 
ISBN 0-201-11065-2. $19.95. 


THIS IS A LIST of books recently received at BYTE Publications. The list is not meant 
to be exhaustive; its purpose is to acquaint BYTE readers with recently published titles in 
computer science and related fields. We regret that we cannot review or comment on all the 
books we receive; instead, this list is meant to be a monthly acknowledgment of these books 
and the publishers who sent them. 


CLU Reference Manual. B. 
Liskov, R. Atkinson. T. Bloom. 

E. Moss. J. C. Schaffert. 

R. Scheifler. and A. Snyder. New 
York: Springer-Verlag. 1981; 200 
pages. 15.5 by 23.5 cm. soft- 
cover, ISBN 0-387-91253-3, 
$14.95. 

Careers in Computers. Texe 
W. Marrs. New York: Simon & 
Schuster. 1984; 160 pages, 

15.5 by 23.5 cm. softcover, 

ISBN 0-671-50221-2. $8.95. 

THe Commodore 64 Software 
Buyer's Guide. Gary Phillips, 
Terry Silveria, and Sanjiva K. 
Nath. Bowie, MD: Brady Com¬ 
munications Co.. 1984; 494 
pages. 17.8 by 23.3 cm. soft- 
cover. ISBN 0-89303-382-0, 
$16.95. 

TVie Commodore 64 Survival 
Manual, Winn L. Rosch. New 
York: Bantam Books. 1984; 2 56 
pages. 15.3 by 22.8 cm. soft- 
cover. ISBN 0-553-34127-8. 

$9.95. 

Compaq User’s Handbook. 
Weber Systems Inc. staff. New 
York: Ballantine Books. 1984, 

352 pages. 14 by 21.5 cm, soft- 
cover. ISBN 0-345-31841-2. 

$9.95. 

TVie Complete Software Mar¬ 
ketplace. 1984-85. Roger Hoff¬ 
man. New York: Warner Books. 
1984; 2 56 pages, 20.5 by 23.3 
cm. softcover. ISBN 0-446- 
38024-5. $17.95. 

TVie Computer Alphabet Book, 
Elizabeth S. Wall. New York: 

Avon Books. 1984; 64 pages. 

13 by 19 cm. softcover, 

ISBN 0-380-87106-8. $2.2 5. 

Computer Based National 
Information Systems, Stephen 
J. Andriole, ed. New York: 
Petrocelli Books. 1984; 176 
pages. 20 by 26 cm. hardcover. 
ISBN 0-89433-255-4. $24.95. 

TVie Computer Cookbook. 
William Bates. New York: 

( continued ) 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 409 








Inquiry 367 


The best of two worlds 


The MYTECH COMAL interactive programming language gives 
you the simplicity of Basic and the power of Pascal. Many of the 
concepts are infuenced by ADA * \ for example exception 
handling, packages etc. 


Mytech Comal features 

• Friendly, interactive user inter¬ 
face with help facilities 

• 100% orthogonal. 


13} 


//^PAOC 3rqu3ge_cneck 

[ IF a*™ THEN 

j_[ 

ElIF OK 'oHr*iOR*»r»_ other. itn^eTHwJJ 

unstructured - yToa/rarrmnq 

J1 

ENDPTOC Un check^^JJ 
/siSsgSBS SSSS^gg, 

/ C 1 tiuooOOOODDDODQ OC> O \ 

g naooooQooOpooo oo^^N. 


• Fulfills the Comal 2.00 requirements 


• Available for IBM R 7 PC-G. PC-XT, 
PC-AT, PPC, WICAT etc 

• Implemented on UNIX* 2 , 
CPM/86 r3 , C-CPM/86 r 4 , 

MS-DOS r5 , PC-DOS r6 

• Easily ported to 16/32-bits systems 

• The package concept makes 
Mytech Comal extensible 

• Turtlegraphics package (LOGO) 
is available 

• Easily customized for 
foreign languages 

• Support for the 8087. 

• Is written in ”C”. 

• Comal is an official education 
language in Europe. 


Mytech Comal is the perfect language for students as well as for the 
professional programmer. For further information please ask for a 
data sheet. Or why not do it the right way , order your Mytech Comal 
system today and move in to a new fascinating and powerful pro¬ 
gramming dimension. DDoD. ?) AT & T. 3&4) Qqital Research 5&6) Microsoft IBM 7) IBM 

MYTECH (1H DAT A A B 


Jungmansgatan 25, P.O. Box 7230 S-402 35 Gothenburg, Sweden 
Tel. 46 (0)31 42 07 80, Telex 89200574, Teletex, Datex 240189200574 


a message to 
our subscribers 

From time to time we make the BYTE subscriber list 
available to other companies who wish to send our 
subscribers material about their products. We take great 
care to screen these companies, choosing only those 
who are reputable, and whose products, services, or 
information we feel would be of interest to you. Direct 
mail is an efficient medium for presenting the latest 
personal computer goods and services to our 
subscribers. 

Many BYTE subscribers appreciate this controlled use 
of our mailing list, and look forward to finding 
information of interest to them in the mail. Used are 
our subscribers' names and addresses only (no other 
information we may have is ever given). 

While we believe the distribution of this information 
is of benefit to our subscribers, we firmly respect the 
wishes of any subscriber who does not want to receive 
such promotional literature. Should you wish to restrict 
the use of your name, simply send your request to the 
following address. 

BYTE Publications Inc. 

Attn: Circulation Department, 

70 Main St., Peterborough, NH 03458 


BOOKS 


Doubleday and Co., 1984; 416 
pages, 20.8 by 27.8 cm, soft- 
cover, ISBN 0-385-19291-6, 
$14.95. 

Computer Craziness. Paul 
Somerson and Stephen Manes. 
New York; Scholastic, 1984; 176 
pages. 20.3 by 27.5 cm, soft- 
cover. ISBN 0-590-33175-2. 

$4.95. 

Computer Keyboarding for 
Children, Edward B. Fry. 

New York; Teachers College, 
Columbia University. 1984; 28 
pages. 21.5 by 28 cm. spiral- 
bound. ISBN 0-8077-2754-7. 
$8.95. 

Computer Monsters. Stephen 
Manes and Paul Somerson. New 
York: Scholastic. 1984, 176 
pages, 20.3 by 27.5 cm, soft- 
cover. ISBN 0-590-33177-9. 

$4.95. 

Computer Olympics, Stephen 
Manes and Paul Somerson. New 
York: Scholastic, 1984; 174 
pages. 20.3 by 27.5 cm. soft- 
cover. ISBN 0-590-33176-0. 

$4.95. 

Computer Programs for the 
Kitchen, Tbrence F. Dicker. Blue 
Ridge Summit. PA: T£b Books. 
1984; 256 pages. 18.8 by 23.3 
cm, softcover, ISBN 0-8306- 
1707-8. $13.50. 

Computer Space Adventures. 
Paul Somerson and Stephen 
Manes. New York: Scholastic, 
1984; 176 pages. 20.3 by 27.5 
cm. softcover. ISBN 0-590- 
33178-7. $4.95. 

Computers and Data Process¬ 
ing. 2nd ed.. H. L. Capron and 
Brian K. Williams. Menlo Park, 
CA: Benjamin/Cummings Pub¬ 
lishing Co.. 1984; 488 pages, 

20.5 by 26.3 cm. hardcover, 

ISBN 0-8053-2214-0. $26.95. 

Computers and Micropro¬ 
cessors: Components and Sys¬ 
tems. A. C. Downton. Berkshire. 
England: Van Nostrand Reinhold 
(U K.). 1984; 192 pages. 19 by 

24.5 cm, softcover. ISBN 0-442- 
30572-9. £5.75. 

Computing in Applied Science. 
William I. Thompson. New York: 
John Wiley & Sons. 1984; 352 
pages. 16.5 by 24 cm. hard¬ 
cover. ISBN 0-471-09355-6. 
$26.95. 


received 


Creating Technical Manuals, 
Gerald Cohen and Donald H. 
Cunningham. New York: 
McGraw-Hill. 1984; 176 pages, 

15 by 22.5 cm. softcover. 

ISBN 0-07-011584-2. $16.95. 

EasyWriter Simplified for the 
IBM Personal Computer, Don 
Cassel. Englewood Cliffs. NJ: 
Prentice-Hall. 1984; 176 pages. 

17.5 by 23.5 cm. softcover. 

ISBN 0-13-222431-3. $21.95. 

Experimental Methods of 
Polymer Physics, A. Malkin, A. 
Askadsky. A. Chalykh. and V. 
Kovriga. Englewood Cliffs. NJ: 
Prentice-Hall, 1983; 520 pages. 

14.5 by 22 cm, hardcover, 

ISBN 0-13-295485-0. $38.95. 

THe Free Software Handbook. 
1984-1985 CP/M Edition, 
Patricia Hatcher and Blake Van 
Meter. Plano. TX: Peopldfalk 
Associates. 1984; 368 pages, 

14 by 21.5 cm. softcover. 

ISBN 0-915907-07-0. $17.95. 

At Home with BASIC. Henry 
Mullish and Dov Kruger. New 
York: Simon & Schuster. 1984, 
272 pages. 14.8 by 21.3 cm. 
spiral-bound, ISBN 0-671- 
49861-4. $12.95. 

How Did We Find Out About 
Computers? Isaac Asimov. New 
York: Walker and Co., 1984; 66 
pages. 14.8 by 21.3 cm. hard¬ 
cover. ISBN 0-8027-6533-5. 
$8.85. 

How Tt> Document Your Soft¬ 
ware. Barbara Spear. Blue 
Ridge Summit, PA: Tkb Books. 
1984; 208 pages. 18.5 by 23.5 
cm. softcover. ISBN 0-8306- 
1724-8, $13.50. 

IBM PC/XT BASIC PRO¬ 
GRAMMING and Applications. 
Louis Nashelsky and Robert 
Boylestad. Englewood Cliffs. NJ: 
Prentice-Hall. 1984; 320 pages. 
17.8 by 23.3 cm. softcover. 

ISBN 0-13-448325-1. $14.95. 

InfoWorld's Essential Guide 
to Apple. Thom Hogan and the 
editors of InfM/orld. New York: 
Harper & Row, 1984; 240 pages. 

18.5 by 23.5 cm. softcover. 

ISBN 0-06-669001-3. $16.95. 

InfoWorld's Essential Guide 
to CP/M. Tbny Bove, Cheryl 
Rhodes, and the editors of Info- 
World. New York: Harper & Row, 


410 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


























Inquiry 91 


BOOKS RECEIVED 


1984; 2 54 pages. 18.5 by 23.5 
cm, softcover, ISBN 0-06- 
669003-X. $16.95. 

InfoWorld's Essential Guide 
to the IBM PC. Frank I. Derfler 
Jr. and the editors of I nfdNorld. 
New York: Harper & Row, 1984; 

2 56 pages. 18.5 by 23.5 cm. 
softcover. ISBN 0-06-669002-1. 
$16.95. 

Inside CP/M-86: A Guide for 
Users, David E. Cortesi. New 
York: Holt, Rinehart and 
Winston, 1984; 224 pages. 

19 by 23.5 cm, softcover. 

ISBN 0-03-062656-0, $17.45. 

Inside Commodore DOS. 

Richard Immers and Gerald G. 
Neufeld. Chatsworth. CA: 
Datamost, 1984; 512 pages. 17.8 
by 25.3 cm, softcover, 

ISBN 0-88190-366-3. $19.95. 

Instant Wordstar for the Kay- 
pro. Robert Wolenik. Reston, 

VA: Reston Publishing, 1984; 

144 pages. 15 by 22.8 cm. soft- 
cover. ISBN 0-8359-3090-4. $15.95. 


Programming on the Atari 
Home Computers. Ben 
Shneiderman. Boston, MA: 

Little, Brown and Co., 1984; 

208 pages. 19 by 23.5 cm, soft- 
cover. ISBN 0-316-78722-1. 

$8.95. 

Lotus 1-2-3 for Marketing and 
Sales, Michael V. Laric and 
Ronald Stiff. Englewood Cliffs. 

N|: Prentice-Hall, 1984; 240 
pages. 17.8 by 23.5 cm, soft- 
cover. ISBN 0-13-540899-7. 
$14.95. 

Machine Intelligence 10, 
Intelligent Systems: Practice 
and Perspective. J. E. Hayes. D. 
Michie, and Y-H Pao. eds. New 
York: John Wiley & Sons. 1982; 
582 pages. 15.8 by 25 cm. soft- 
cover. ISBN 0-470-27323-2, 
$109.95. 

Managing Your Business with 
Multiplan. Ruth K. Witkin. 
Bellevue, WA: Microsoft Press. 
1984, 430 pages, 18.8 by 23.3 
cm. softcover. ISBN 0-914845- 
06-3, $17.95. 


FREE SHIPPING 

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Invitation to MVS: Logic & 
Debugging, Harry Katzan Jr. and 
Davis Tharayil. New York: 
Petrocelli Books. 1984; 256 
pages, 16 by 24 cm. hardcover, 
ISBN 0-89433-081-0. $29.95. 

Job Control Language, 2nd 
ed.. Ruth Ashley and Judi N. 
Fernandez. New York: John 
Wiley & Sons. 1984; 168 pages. 
17 by 25.3 cm. softcover. 

ISBN 0-471-79983-1. $12.95. 

THe Joy of Computer Chess. 

David Levy. Englewood Cliffs, 

NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1984; 144 
pages, 13.5 by 21.5 cm. soft- 
cover. ISBN 0-13-511619-8, $7.95. 

Kids & Computers: Advanced 
Programming Handbook. 
Eugene Galanter. New York: 
Perigee Books, 1984; 224 pages, 
17.5 by 23.5 cm. softcover, 

ISBN 0-399-50976-3, $7.95. 

Let’s Learn BASIC: A Kids' 
Introduction to BASIC 
Programming on the Apple II 
Series, Ben Shneiderman. 
Boston, MA: Little, Brown 
and Co.. 1984; 208 pages. 

19 by 23.5 cm, softcover. 

ISBN 0-316-78721-3, $8.95. 

Let’s Learn BASIC: A Kids’ 
Introduction to BASIC 


Microcomputers Go to 
School, Stanton Leggett, ed. 
Chicago. IL: Tfeach ’em. 1984; 

248 pages. 13.5 by 21.5 cm. 
softcover. ISBN 0-931028-53-1. 
$16.95. 

Le Microprocesseur 16 Bits 
8086/8088. Alain-Bernard 
Fontaine. Paris, France: 

Masson, 1984; 238 pages. 

16 by 23.8 cm. softcover. 

ISBN 2-225-80313-7, 

108 francs. 

Microprocessors in Industry, 
Michael F. Hordeski. New York: 
Van Nostrand Reinhold. 1984; 

542 pages. 16 by 23.5 cm. hard¬ 
cover. ISBN 0-442-23207-1. 
$49.50. 

Minute Manual for PFS: File/ 
Report/Graph/Write. Jeffery 
Lesho and Jim Pirisino. Colum¬ 
bia. MD: MinuteWare, 1984; 184 
pages, 13.5 by 21.5 cm. soft- 
cover. ISBN 0-913131-03-2. 

$12.95. 

A Model-Management Frame¬ 
work for Mathematical Pro¬ 
gramming. Kenneth H. Palmer. 
New York: John Wiley & Sons. 
1984; 416 pages. 17 by 24 cm. 
hardcover. ISBN 0-471-80472-X. 
$42.50. 

( continued ) 



APPLE 

2E w/Disk Drive 
Macintosh 
Apple 2C 
Imagewriter 
Addt Drives 


486 
from 114 


COMMODORE 

Commodore 64 
1541 Disk Drive 
1702 Monitor 
MPS801 Printer 
1526 Printer 

ATARI 

800 XL 
1027 Printer 
1050 Drive 
Indus. Drive 
1025 Printer 


208 

179 

215 


279 

169 


SANYO 


550 SS 
550 D.S 
555 D.S 
555 S S 
CRT 30 


648 

659 

949 

839 

99 


IBM 

PC w/Drive 1299 

PC XT 2499 

PC Portable w/Drive 1499 

PCjr 459 

Color Card 144 

Monocrome Card 159 

IBM Monitor (GRNi 199 

Tecmar Captain 64K 249 

AST Six Pack 229 

Tallgrass 20 Meg 2399 

Quad Board 224 

Paradise 254 

Keytronics 159 

Hercules Color 159 

Hercules Monochrome 319 
Plantromcs 409 

STB Graphix 234 

PC w/10 Meg Hard Dr 2399 

Bernouli Box 1999 

10 Meg Drive 699 

Teac 1/2 Ht 94 

Shugari 1/2 Hi 94 

Panasonic 1/2 Ht 94 


800-441-1144 


ZENITH 

Zenith PC 2150 1631 

Zenith PC 15152 2076 


MONITORS 

Amdek 300 Green 
Amdek 300 Amber 
310 Amber 
Color 300 
Color 500 
Color 600 
Color 700 
Color 710 
Zenith Green 
Taxan 210 
Prlncton HX12 
Taxan 122A 
Taxan 420 


MODEMS 

Hayes 1200 
Hayes 1200B 
Hayes 300 
Micromodem 2E 
Access 123 
Novation J cat 


435 

382 

187 

212 

364 


Inquiry 132 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 411 

































BOOKS RECEIVED 


More Color Computer Appli¬ 
cations. John P. Grillo and J. D. 
Robertson. New York: John 
Wiley & Sons. 1984; 176 pages, 
17 by 2 5.3 cm. softcover. 

ISBN 0-471-80767-2. $39.90. 
Includes floppy disk. 

Multiplan for Marketing And 
Sales, Michael V. Laric. 
Englewood Cliffs. NJ: Prentice- 
Hall. 1984; 320 pages. 17.8 by 
23.3 cm. softcover, ISBN 0-13- 
605080-8, $14.95. 

Multiplan: Home and Office 
Companion, Elna Tymes and 
Peter Antoniak. Berkeley. CA: 
Osborne/McGraw-Hill, 1984; 246 
pages. 20.5 by 27.5 cm. soft- 
cover. ISBN 0-88134-133-9. 
$15.95. 

New Horizons in Educa¬ 
tional Computing. Masoud 
Yazdani, ed. New York: John 
Wiley & Sons. 1984; 320 
pages. 17 by 24.5 cm, hard¬ 
cover. ISBN 0-470-20022-7. 
$44.95. 


The Osborne/McGraw-Hill 
Business System Buyer's 
Guide. 2nd ed. Adam Osborne. 
Steve Cook, and Gail Todd. 
Berkeley, CA: Osborne/ 
McGraw-Hill. 1984; 182 
pages. 16.3 by 23.3 cm. soft- 
cover. ISBN 0-88134-12 5-8. 
$10.95. 

PEAS Structural Analysis 
Series: Apple II or He Version. 
Practical Engineering Applica¬ 
tions Software (PEAS). New 
York: John Wiley & Sons, 1984; 
88 pages, 14.8 by 22.8 cm, soft- 
cover. ISBN 0-471-80290-5. $30. 
Includes floppy disk. 

Personal Finance Programs 
for Home Computers. William 
S. Hodges and Neal A. Novak. 
Boston, MA: Little, Brown 
and Co.. 1984 192 pages. 

21.5 by 27.8 cm. softcover, 

ISBN 0-316-36788-5. $14.50. 

THe Power of: Appleworks, 
Robert E. Williams. Englewood 
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. 1984; 


240 pages. 21 by 27.5 cm, soft- 
cover. ISBN 0-13-688045-2. 
$19.95. 

Power Up! Kids' Guide to 
the Commodore 64. Marty 
Dejonghe and Caroline Earhart. 
Berkeley. CA: Sybex. 1984; 204 
pages. 18 by 22.8 cm. spiral- 
bound. ISBN 0-89588-188-8. 
$14.95. 

A Practical Guide to the 
Apple lie. Peter C. Weiglin and 
Joyce Conklin. Reading. MA: 
Addison-Wesley, 1984; 176 
pages. 18.8 by 23.5 cm. soft- 
cover. ISBN 0-201-09660-9. 
$12.95. 

Presentation Graphics on 
the Apple Macintosh. Steve 
Lambert. Bellevue. WA: Micro¬ 
soft Press. 1984 288 pages. 

18.8 by 23.3 cm. softcover. ISBN 
0-914845-11-X. $18.95. 

Probots and People: THe Age 
of the Personal Robot. 
Timothy O. Knight. New York: 


McGraw-Hill, 1984; 144 pages, 
13.5 by 20.3 cm. softcover, 

ISBN 0-07-035106-6. $9.95. 

Programmable Assembly. W. B. 
Heginbotham, ed. New York: 
Springer-Verlag. 1984; 368 
pages, 16 by 24 cm. hardcover. 
ISBN 0-387-13479-4. $43. 

Programming Apple BASIC. 
John J. DiElsi. Elaine S. 
Grossman. John P. Tlicciarone. 
New York: Holt. Rinehart and 
Winston. 1984; 464 pages. 

17.8 by 23.3 cm. softcover. 

ISBN 0-03-063733-3. $18.45. 

Programming in C on the IBM 
PC, Bryan J. Cummings and 
Lawrence Pollack. Englewood 
Cliffs. NJ: Prentice-Hall. 1984; 
208 pages. 15.3 by 22.8 cm, 
softcover. ISBN 0-13-729351-8. 
$14.95. 

Should I Buy a Home Com¬ 
puter? A Guide with Check¬ 
lists. Lincoln Hallen. Princeton. 
NJ: Petrocelli Books. 1984; 


bite 


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BOOKS RECEIVED 


104 pages. 14 by 20.8, soft- 
cover. ISBN 0-89433-257-0. 

$8.95. 

Small-time Operator: TVie 
Computer Edition, Bernard 
Kamoroff. South Bend. 

IN: and books. 1984; 306 
pages, 21 by 27 cm. spiral- 
bound. ISBN 0-89708-117-X. 
$19.95. 

Software Defect Removal. 
Robert Dunn. New York: 
McGraw-Hill. 1984; 352 
pages, 15.5 by 23 cm, hard¬ 
cover. ISBN 0-07-018313-9. 
$29.95. 

A Software Law Primer, 
Frederic William Neitzke. New 
York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 
1984, 170 pages. 16 by 23.5 cm, 
hardcover, ISBN 0442-26866-1. 
$24.95. 

THe Software Marketplace: 
Where 7b Sell What You 
Program, Suzan D. Prince. 

New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984; 


220 pages. 16 by 23 cm. soft- 
cover. ISBN 007-050859-3. 
$16.95. 

Structure and Interpretation 
of Computer Programs. 

Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay 
Sussman with Julie Sussman. 
Cambridge. MA: MIT Press. 

1985; 564 pages. 16 by 23.5 
cm. hardcover. ISBN 0262- 
01077-1, $30. 

Structured Programming with 
Basic for the Acorn Com¬ 
puter, Roy Atherton. New York: 
John Wiley & Sons. 1984; 208 
pages. 17 by 2 5.5 cm. softcover. 
ISBN 0471-806005. $15.95. 

Tl Logo, Harold Abelson. New 
York: McGraw-Hill. 1984; 256 
pages. 18 by 23.5 cm. softcover. 
ISBN 0-07-038459-2. $17.95. 

Take It with You: TVie 
Complete Guide to Portable 
Business Computing. Richard 
M. Grelewicz. New York: John 
Wiley & Sons, 1984; 264 pages. 


15 by 22.8 cm, softcover. 

ISBN 0471-88198-8. $14.95. 

THe TIme-Life Step-by-Step 
Guide to the Commodore 64. 
the editors of Time-Life. New 
York: Random House, 1984; 102 
pages, 21 by 24 cm. hardcover. 
ISBN 0394-72515-8. $12.95. 

THe TIme-Life Step-by-Step 
Guide to the IBM PC. the 
editors of Time-Life, New York: 
Random House, 1984; 102 
pages, 21 by 24 cm. hardcover. 
ISBN 0-394-72521-2. $12.95. 

THe TIme-Life Step-by-Step 
Guide to the IBM PCjr, the 
editors of Time-Life. New York: 
Random House, 1984; 102 
pages. 21 by 24 cm, hardcover. 
ISBN 0394-72519-0. $12.95. 

La TkANSPORTABILITE DU 
Logiciel, Olivier Lecarme and 
Mireille Pellissier. Paris. France: 
Masson, 1984; 264 pages. 16 by 
24 cm. softcover. ISBN 2-225- 
80223-8. 140 francs. 


TUrtlesteps: An Introduction 
to Apple Logo and TVrrapin 
Logo. Pamela Sharp. Bowie, 

MD: Brady Communications Co.. 
1984; 210 pages. 17.8 by 23.3 
cm. softcover. ISBN 0-89303- 
906-3. $14.95. 

Using the IBM Personal 
Computer: EasyWriter. Ada W. 
Finifter. New York: Holt. 

Rinehart and Winston, 1984; 318 
pages. 17.8 by 23.5 cm. soft- 
cover, ISBN 0-03-063736-8, 
$18.45. 

VIC 20 Computer Graphics 
Tdolbox, Russell L. Schnapp 
and Irvin G. Stafford. Engle¬ 
wood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 
1984; 192 pages. 17.8 by 23.3 
cm, softcover, ISBN 0-13- 
941998-5. $14.95. 

Word Processing with Your 
Adam. Barbara Spear. Blue 
Ridge Summit, PA: 'feb Books. 
1984; 160 pages. 18.5 by 23.5 
cm. softcover. ISBN 0-8306- 
1766-3. $9.25. ■ 



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FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 413 










INTRODUCING 

Interface Technologies’ Modula-2 
Software Development System 

The computer press is hailing Modula-2 as “the next 
standard in programming languages.” Modula-2 
combines the strengths of Pascal with the features 
that made C so popular, like independent 
compilation and direct hardware control. 

But until today, no company offered a 
Modula-2 system that made the development 
of software fast, easy and efficient. Now, 
though, there’s a new tool at your disposal. 


The fast, powerful tool 
for programmers 


And if you leave an undefined variable or data type, 
the editor detects the mistake and gives you the option 
of on-line “help” to correct it. No other programming 
text editor offers you so much innovation at any price. 

How to turn “wait time” 
into “work time” 

The vast majority of 
programming time is 
spent waiting, and the 
biggest slowdown is most 
often with compilers. 



The breakthrough is here: Interface Technologies’ 
new Modula-2 Software Development System for 
the IBM® PC, XT, AT and compatible 
computers to give programmers the same 
quantum leap in productivity spreadsheets 
and word processors gave to end-users. It 
can reduce monotonous wait time, will 
dramatically increase speed, help stop 
thoughtless mistakes, and free you to become more 
creative in virtually all of your programming efforts. 

How to speed input and 
eliminate 30% of errors 

Thirty percent of programming mistakes are syntax 
errors and simple typos in the program structure. Our 
“syntax-directed” Modula-2 editor does away with 
these time-consuming headaches once and for all. 

It speeds input by 
cutting manual typing 
as much as 90%, letting 
you enter statements 
1 with a single keystroke. 
For example, if you type 
a capital “I” to begin a 
line, the editor completes 
the logical “IF THEN” 
statement automatically, so 
r you can concentrate on what you 
Enter complete statements want to program, rather than con- 
with one keystroke. centrate on what you’re typing. 

The editor locks out errors, finishing statements and 
procedures in perfect accord with the standardized 
rules of Modula-2. It also indents and formats your 
text automatically, making programs easy to read and 
maintain, an important feature on big projects. 



It not only has a faster compiler, it also 
saves time by compiling while you edit. 





Our compiler turns 
wait time to work time 
with a new innovation 
that lets you compile 
in the “background.” 

With background 
compilation, your program is automatically compiled 
into object code line by line as you work, every minute 
you spend writing or editing a Modula-2 program! 

When you’re finished editing, all that’s left for the 
compiler is a quick mopping up job that generates 
optimized native code in a single pass. 

How quick is “quick”? 

Thanks to background compilation and the fact that 
the compiler itself is so fast, Interface Technologies’ 
compiler turns 100 lines of typical Modula-2 text 
into optimized machine code in under five seconds. 

Plus the Interface compiler produces compact code 
with execution speed superior to that produced by any 
other Modula-2 compiler on the market. 

How to do two things at once 

Along with the background compiler and syntax- 
directed editor, which can save you hours every day and 
make you more productive, Interface Technologies’ 
Software Development System gives your monitor 


414 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 

















windows so you can refer to one file while you edit 
another simultaneously, saving you even 
more time. 

Concurrent editing of two 
or more files is especially use¬ 
ful when doing programming 
work that’s intended for 
separate compilation, and 
Interface Technologies has 
the only Modula-2 system 
on the market that provides 
you with this helpful benefit 
for developing software. , W , ork 

r ° taster, easier in windows. 


How preprogrammed modules 
speed development 


One of the advantages of Modula-2 is that it lets you 
build large, reliable programs quickly, by linking 
together many smaller “building-block” modules. 

The development system’s toolkit of precompiled 
program modules includes the standard Modula-2 
library, and adds exclusive link-and-run modules for 
direct calls to the operating system, sound, and color 



You can use it on any IBM® PC, XT, AT or 
compatible computer with two double-sided, double¬ 
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You get a thoroughly indexed, comprehensive user’s 
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Technologies. But the most important thing you get is 
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is Modula-2, and now it’s easier than ever. 

For more information, or to order the Modula-2 
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today. In Texas, call (713) 523-8422. 

You can also order or 
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SOOn. Operates on the new 

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graphics support. 
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Increase productivity for $249 


Interface Technologies’ Software Development 
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For $249, you get the syntax-directed editor and 
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have even modestly experienced programmers writing 
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FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 415 


IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation. 






































LETTERS 


(continued from page 32) 

Benchmarking 
UNIX Systems 


Thanks to David F. Hinnant's excellent ar¬ 
ticle. Benchmarking UNIX Systems" 
(August 1984. page 132). I feel I gained 
an awareness of the limitations and advan¬ 
tages of the different UNIX/machine com¬ 
binations. The results are a great reference 
guide. However. I was a little surprised by 
the lack of a System V version (the 
standard-to-be one), which motivated me 
to run all the benchmark programs speci¬ 
fied in the article on an NCR Tower (an 
M68000-based computer) under UNIX 
System V. T£ble 1 shows my findings. For 
the tests I used 2 megabytes of RAM and 
one 30-megabyte hard disk. 

The values obtained fall about midway 
between systems 6 and 7 when plotted on 
the graph in figure 1 on page 408. 

I was rather pleased with these results, 
since my Tower was. according to Hin¬ 
nant's tables, among the top seven most 
powerful systems. I hope this small exten¬ 
sion of Mr. Hinnant’s work will be very 
useful to all System V users, because this 
version is intended to standardize the 
UNIX world. 

Mario Descalzi 
Columbia. SC 


Table I: NCR lower performance 
using UNIX benchmarks discussed in 
"Benchmarking UNIX Systems ." 




real 

user 

sys 

1 . 

Pipe 

6.1 

0.0 

2.8 

2 

System Call 

13.8 

0.5 

13.2 

3. 

Function Call 

1.7 

1.6 

0.0 

4 

Sieve 

4.5 

4.3 

0.1 

5a. Disk Write 

3.4 

0.0 

1.3 

5b. Disk Read 

8.8 

0.0 

2.0 

6. 

Shell 

9.1 

0.4 

2.2 

7 

Loop 

13.4 

12.8 

0.1 


Number of Concurrent 

Processes 


1 2 3 

4 

5 

6 


9.8 16.0 22.2 

35.3 

44 2 

52.2 


A Call for Standards 


In a computer system, dates can be kept 
in many different ways. If' DD' represents 
day. "MM month, and "YY” the year, let 
me define the British way as "MMDDYY." 
the French way as "DDMMYY." and the 
standard international way as "YYMMDD." 
Despite its universality and advantages for 
sorting, the last one is not used by MS- 


DOS. dBASE. or Quickcode (to name just 
a few). 

Let me ask both software and hardware 
developers to stick to international stan¬ 
dards. Let me further suggest that they 
keep dates as numeric values (taking ad¬ 
vantage of most keyboards' numeric lock¬ 
ing feature) and automatically enforce 
month and day values smaller than 13 and 
32. respectively. Zeros could be allowed 
for month and day when their values are 
unknown. 

Paul-Andre Desiardins 
Rabat. Morocco 

Enhancing Perfect Writer 


In the August 1984 BYTE. Barry D. Smith 
wrote about reconfiguring Kaypro's key¬ 
pad for use with Perfect Writer ( "Recon¬ 
figuring Perfect Writer Commands." page 
22 ). 

To anyone using Perfect Writer on a Kay- 
pro. I recommend the inexpensive en¬ 
hancements available from Plu*Perfect 
Systems (Box 1494. Idyllwild. CA 92349). 
While running the word-processing pro¬ 
gram. keys can be defined, files printed 
or erased, disks changed, and the direc¬ 
tory accessed. Key definitions also can be 
saved and automatically loaded. The swap 
file can be increased in size up to an en¬ 
tire disk. 

Plu*Perfect recommends erasing Perfect 
Writer's menu to provide space on the disk 
for key definitions and other files. Every¬ 
thing that can be done through the menu 
can be done more quickly at the system 
level. 

Documentation and user support is ex¬ 
cellent. I have been using the enhance¬ 
ments for nearly a year and wouldn't do 
without them. 

James Swanson 
McBride. British Columbia , Canada 

Subscriber s Lament 


My letter is one of caution to other 
readers of computer magazines. My ex¬ 
perience with computers and the com¬ 
puter-magazine industry goes back only 
about four years, and in this period of time 
I have subscribed to at least eight different 
publications, most of which are good 
sources of information and education, 
especially yours. But something less than 
professional is happening within this 
industry. 

In the past six months I have had the 
unfortunate experience of being a sub¬ 
scriber to two publications that just quit 
sending out their magazines: CLOAD and 


Computer User. A third magazine that quit 
publishing (Basic Computing ) did have the 
professional integrity to transfer its sub¬ 
scriptions to another magazine. 

Maybe I have been a victim of a freak 
set of circumstances, but I don't think so. 
I believe this is the trend of the future. I 
hope not. but there doesn't seem to be 
much a consumer can do once the maga¬ 
zine has your money. It's obvious that bad 
management is ever present even in the 
computer-magazine industry. 

Steve Hermes 
Bloomington. IL 

FORTH Conference 


The fifth Rochester FORTH Conference will 
be held at the University of Rochester. 
Rochester. New York. June 12-15. 1985. 
Sponsored by the Institute for Applied 
FORTH Research Inc., the focus of the con¬ 
ference will be on software engineering 
and software management. 

There is a call for papers on the follow¬ 
ing topics: 

•software engineering and software man¬ 
agement practices 

•FORTH applications, including, but not 
limited to: real-time, business, medical, 
space-based, laboratory and personal sys¬ 
tems: and FORTH microchip applications 
•FORTH technology, including finite-state 
machines, metacompilers. FORTH imple¬ 
mentations. control structures, and hybrid 
hardware/software systems 

Papers may be presented in either plat¬ 
form or poster sessions. Please submit a 
200-word abstract by March 30, 1985. 
Papers must be received by April 30, 
1985, and are limited to a maximum of 
four single-spaced, camera-ready pages. 
Longer papers may be presented at the 
conference but should be submitted to 
the refereed Journal of FORTH Application and 
Research. 

Abstracts and papers should be sent to 
the conference chairman: Lawrence P. 
Forsley. Laboratory for Last Energetics. 
250 East River Rd.. Rochester. NY 14623. 
For more information, call or write Ms. 
Maria Gress. Institute for Applied FORTH 
Research. 70 Elmwood Ave.. Rochester. 
NY 14611. (716) 235-0168. 

Adding a Hard Disk 


In Roy M. Matney's excellent article. "Add¬ 
ing a Hard Disk" (October 1984. page 
203). he reiterated a common misunder¬ 
standing about my software product, The 
Norton Utilities. I would like to explain 


416 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 












LETTERS 


what my programs can and cannot do, and 
why. 

As many of your readers know, my Nor¬ 
ton Utility programs provide file recovery 
(UnErase) and disk exploration (DiskLook) 
features for the IBM PC family However, 
in the past they have not worked on most 
unconventional disks: RAM disks, quad- 
density disks, jFORMAT 10-sector disks, or 
any hard disk that wasn't in one strict 
format. 

Many people—including Mr. Matney— 
have assumed that this was because my 
programs worked "below the BIOS." Ac¬ 
tually not. All disk operations were done 
through conventional PC BIOS services. 
My programs did not work on more disk 
formats for a much worse reason: simply 
because I had coded these programs 
rather rigidly on the framework of five 
standard IBM disk formats. It was a lack 
of flexibility in my programming that 
restricted their use from wide application. 

I am happy to say that I have mended 
my ways. Version 3 of my Utilities does all 
of its disk work completely at the DOS 
level (a full level higher than the BIOS) and 


is carefully written to adjust to any reason¬ 
able disk format. The version 3 programs 
run beautifully on RAM disks, partitioned 
hard disks, the PC AT's 1.2-megabyte high- 
capacity disk, quad-density micro disks 
(such as those in the Data General/One), 
and many others. 

Version 3 of the Norton Utilities is in 
beta test as I write this and is planned to 
be released to the public in mid- 
December 1984. Owners of old versions 
can upgrade for a $2 5 charge. 

For those who are interested, here is a 
summary of what's new in version 3: the 
programs automatically adjust to the for¬ 
mat of the disk they are working with; the 
programs are virtually DOS-generic, so 
that they would work on nearly any MS- 
DOS computer; a new set of disk-manage¬ 
ment services, dubbed the "hard disk 
helpers," has been added; overall, the 
character of these programs has been 
shifted toward the needs of nonexpert 
computer users: the programs are easier 
to understand and use and have features 
with broader appeal. I’m not leaving the 
experts unsatisfied, though: my beta- 


testers, experts all, have been giving ver¬ 
sion 3 lots of applause. 

Peter Norton 
Santa Monica, CA 

I enjoyed Roy Matney's informative arti¬ 
cle. "Adding a Hard Disk." on hard-disk up¬ 
grades. However, it is incorrect to say that 
the Norton Utilities will not work with our 
controller. The Norton program is expect¬ 
ing 305 DOS cylinders, no more, no less. 
Our system gives you more than that. By 
using FDISK.COM to reduce the number 
of DOS cylinders to 305, the Norton Utili¬ 
ties will perform as expected. 

Chris TIpton 
Director of Technical Support 
Maynard Electronics 
Casselberry, FL 

Cluster Analysis 


Rob Spencer's article. "Cluster Analysis" 
(September 1984, page 129), is a jewel. In 
the midst of all the recent articles on struc¬ 
turing BASIC by executing subroutines 

( continued ) 


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FORTUNE 1500 
COMPANIES— 

LET US SOLVE YOUR 
SYSTEM NEEDS! 


Special Sale Items 


high quality 
diskettes... 

5V4” DSDD Soft Sector w/Hub Ring 

Bulk (min.20).$1.49 ea. 

DYSAN, 3M.CALL 

Maxwell for IBM AT.6.75 ea. 

3 l /2” SS for APPLE etc.4.50 ea. 


TELECOMMUNICATION 


$470 


STUDENT 
BACK 
TO 

SCHOOL 

SPECIAL 

ZENITH ZT1 terminal built in modem, 
auto dial your school computer 


PORTABLES 

Columbia, Eagle, NEC PC 8021, ZENITH, 
TELEVIDEO, COMPAQ, CORONA, 
LASER PRINTERS (HI-RES) 
DESKTOPS: IBM PC/AT, ZENITH, 

APPLE, ETC.CALL 

TERMINALS, PRINTERS, MODEMS, 
PLOTTER, DIGITIZERS 


Inquiry 63 


FEBRUARY 1985 • B Y T E 417 




















































Call Oryx and order by phone 
.. .without a single hang-up! 


IBM/PC 

SOFTWARE 


Alpha Software 

Data Base Mgr II.$179 

Arrays, Inc 

Home Acct. +.$ 95 

Home Acct. w/ 

Tax Advntg.$139 

Central Point 

Copy II PC. $34 

CompuView 

Vedit.$130 

Vedit +. 179 

VPrint. 65 

Connecticut Software 

Printer Boss 

w/ Letter Boss.$ 79 

Above w/ Side Kick... 119 
Creative Software 

Creative Filer.$ 39 

Creative Calc. 39 

Creative Writer. 39 

Creative Bundle Box 
(Filer, Calc, Writer).... 109 
Digital Research 
Concurrent CPM/86... $240 

CP/M-86. 49 

C Language/Comp.... 240 

Others. Call 

Dow Jones 

Market Analyzer.$229 

Market Manager. 189 

Spreadsheet Link. 179 

Ecosoft, Inc. 

Microstat.$259 

Electronic Arts 

Get Organized.$159 

Enertronics 

Energraphics.$259 

w/ Plotter Option. 299 

Fastware Thor (the 
thought organizer.... $245 

Financier, Inc 

Financier II.$119 

Fox & Geller 

Grafox.$189 

RGraph (for 

R-base 4000).$175 

FYI 

Superfile.$149 

FYI 3000. 287 

Sort Facility. 99 

Harvard Software 

Project Manager.$249 

Lifetree 

Volkswriter Deluxe.$179 

Volkswriter Scientific.. 359 


Living Videotext 

Think Tank (256K)... 

...$139 

MDBS 

Knowledge Man. 

...$299 

Menlo Corp. 

In Search. 

...$299 

Micropro 

Wordstar ProPak 
(WS, CS, MM,SI)... 

... $299 

Wordstar. 

... 199 

Professional 

Options Pak. 

...$129 

ProPak Plus (WS, 

CS, MM, SI, TM)... 

...$399 

TeleMerge. 

... 109 

Microrim 

R-base 4000. 

...$279 

R-base Clout. 

... 169 

R-Writer. 

... 99 

Prog Interface. 

... 259 

Microsoft 

Flight Simulator II... 

...$ 39 

Project 1.01. 

... 199 

C Comp. 

... 309 

Basic Comp. 

... 249 

Word 1.15. 

... 229 

MuMath/MuSimp... 

... 199 


(All Microsoft products 
provided in MS DOS.) 


Morgan Computing 

Prof Basic.$ 79 

Trace 86. 99 

Pathfinder. 59 

Multimate . Call 

Northwest Analytical 

Statpak.$365 

Peter Norton Computing 

Norton Utilities.$ 55 

Peachtree 

PeachText 5000.$249 

Series 8 Account¬ 
ing Modules.$389 

Samna Corp. 

Samna Word +.$229 

Samna Word II. 369 

Samna Word III. 439 

Satellite Software 
Word Perfect w/ Sp... $255 
Software Arts 

Spotlight.$109 

Software Publishing 
PFS: File, Graph 

Write, Plan.ea $ 89 

PFS: Report. 79 

PFS: Access, Proof. 69 

Sorcim 

Supercalc III.$249 

Star Software Systems 

Acct'g Partner.$229 

Acct'g Partner II. 659 


Supers oft 

C Compiler - 8086.... $350 

Wang Software 

Grammatik.$ 60 

Proofreader. 42 

Warner Software 

Desk Organizer.$219 

Westminster Software 

Pertmaster. Call 

and many more! 


APPLE 

SOFTWARE 


Alpha Software 

Apple-IBM 

Connection.$169 

Typefaces. 69 

Arrays, Inc 

Home Acct.$ 59 

F CM. 79 

BPI. Call 

Broderbund 

Bank Street Writer .... $ 45 
Bank Street Speller.... 45 
Others. Call 

Cdex 

All Trng Prog's.ea $ 49 

Central Point 

Copy II +.$ 34 

Digital Research . Call 

Dow Jones 

Market Analyzer.$229 

Market Manager. 189 

Spreadsheet Link. 179 

Eduware. Call 

Living Videotext 

Think Tank.$ 99 

Micropro 

Pro Pak (WS, 

SS, MM, SI).$349 

Microsoft. Call 

Peachtree 

Back to Basics.$149 

PeachPak 

Series 40 or 80.$239 

Penguin Software Call 

Sierra 

Frogger...$ 25 

Software Publishing 

PFS: File, Graph, 

Report.ea $ 79 

Spinnaker. Call 

Xerox Education 

Sticky Bear Senes..ea $ 35 


CP/M 

SOFTWARE 


dBASE II CORNER 


Anderson-Bell 

Abstat.$289 

Ashton-Tate 

dBase II. Call 

dBase III. Call 

Framework. Call 

Friday. Call 

Fox & Geller 

dGraph.$169 

Quick Code. 169 

dUtil. 58 

Human Soft 

DBPIus..$ 90 

Sensible Designs 

dProgrammer.$199 


All prices below are for 


8" standard. 

ATI 

All Trng Prog's.ea $ 52 

CompuView 

V-Edit 8080.$130 

V-Edit CP/M 86. 130 

Digital Research 

Pascal MT+ w/ SPP ... $389 
DR Assembler & Tools 149 

CP/M 2.2. 125 

C Basic. 115 

PL/l-80. 375 

Personal Basic. 120 

Access or 

Display Mgr..$299 

C Lang/compiler. 260 

All 8" - 86 Version 
of Above. Call 

Infocom 

Deadline.$ 49 

Starcross. 39 

Suspended. 39 

Zork, I, II, III.ea 39 

Micro Pro 

WordStar.$250 

InfoStar. 265 

Pro-Pak (WS, 

MM, SI, SS).$359 

All Others. Call 

Microsoft. Call 

Microstuf 

Crosstalk.$109 

Northwest Analytical 

Statpak.$365 


Oasis 

Word Plus.$120 

Punctuation & Style.... 99 

Supers oft 

Disk Doctor.$ 74 

Scratchpad Plus. 129 


MACINTOSH 

CORNER 

SOFTWARE 


ATI 

MacCoach.$ 60 

Dow Jones 

Straightalk. 59 

Human Edge 

Sales Edge.$195 

Mgmt Edge. 195 

Intermatrix 

MacPhone.$159 

Living Videotext 

Think Tank.$119 

Main St. Software 

Main St. Filer.$225 

Microsoft 

MacBasic V 1.01....$ 99 

MacChart. 85 

Mac Word. 139 

MacFile. 139 


Monogram 

Dollars & Sense.$139 

Software Publishing 

PFS: File,Report. ea $ 89 


T/Maker 

Click Art.$ 39 

Telos Software 

Filevision.$109 

Games 


Hayden, Infocom 
Penguin, Mirage 
Concepts, Sierra, 


and more. Call 

HARDWARE 

Davong 

Disk Drives. Call 

Kensington Microware 

Swivel.$ 29 

Surge Supressor. 45 

Modem.$399 

Memorex 

3’/j" Diskettes.$ 49 

Tec mar 

Disk Drives. Call 



418 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 











































































































































































APPLE/ 



ALS 

CP/M Card. 

Smarterm II. 

Z-Engine. 

CCS 7711 

Asynch Serial. 

Microsoft 

16K Ramcard. 

Softcard. 

Softcard +. 

Prem Softcard (ME) 
Microtek 

Printer l/F. 

Dumpling-16K .... 

Dumpling-GX. 

Mountain 

A-D/D-A. 

Music System. 

Orange Micro 
Grappler+ w/ buffer. $175 
Prometheus 

Versacard.$159 

Video-7, Inc. 

V-Color RGB cards.... Call 

Videx 

Videoterm VT-602.$249 

Ultraterm. 249 


IBM/PC 

BOARDS 


AST Research 

Six Pak + 64K 
(exp 384K, S/P, Clk).. $279 
MegaPlus 64K, (Cl/Cal, 

S Port, 512K cap 

w/ Megapak).$279 

Extra ports available 
for Megaplus and 
I/O Plus II (Game, 

P or S).$ 40 

Megapak 256K up¬ 
grade for Megaplus. Call 
I/O Plus II Cl/Cal 

and S Port.$139 

Maynard Electronics 
Floppy Drive Cntrlr.... $139 

w/ Par Port. 169 

w/ Ser Port. 179 

Sandstar . Call 


Orange Micro 

Mr. Chips. Call 


Orchid Technology 

the Orchid Blossom' 

(To 384K, Clk w/ alarm, 

S&P ports, ram disk, 
disk caching, upgrade- 

able to PCNet). Call 

Quadram 

Quadboard 64 K, (exp 
384K, Clk/Cal, S&P 

Ports, Software).$269 

Microfazer Stack Printer 
-P/P 8K (exp 512K).... $139 

-S/P 8K (exp 64K). 149 

-S/S 8K (exp 64K). 149 

Quadlink 64K Memory 
(allows Apple SW to 

run on IBM/PC).$469 

Other Products. Call 

Tec mar 

Graphics Master.$479 

Captain's Board. 299 

1st Mate. 259 

2nd Mate. 250 

3rd Mate. 379 

Jr. Captain (128K, C, P) 329 

Jr. 2nd Mate (C, P). 129 

Xedex/Microlog 

Baby Blue.$325 

Baby Blue II. 525 


DISPLAY CARDS 


Amdek 

MAI Card.$399 

Fredericks/Plan- 
tronics Colorplus... Call 

Hercules 

Graphics Board.$349 

Color Board. 199 

MA Systems 

PC Peacock 

Color Board.$249 


Paradise 

Display Card 
(clr/monochrome). $379 
Modular/Display.... 359 


Quadram 

Quadcolor I.$199 

Quadcolor II. 389 


Tecmar 

Graphic Master.$479 


$269 

119 

139 


$ 99 

$ 69 
249 
449 
335 


$ 75 
169 
89 


Call 

$349 


DISK DRIVES 

CDC 1800.$209 

Corona . Call 

Corvus Hd. Call 

Datamac 

Trustor 10H (for 
Macintosh, lie, PC)... Call 

Davong Hd. Call 

Maynard HD. Call 

Tall Grass 

For Wisconsin customers Call 
Tandon TM-100-2.$199 

Mountain, Inc. 

FileSafe Combo 
Disk/Tape Pack for 
the IBM PC or XT 
Model 01-4000-04: 

35MB HD w/27MB 
tape backup 
Model 01-4000-06: 

35MB HD w/60MB 
tape backup. 

For more info .Call 


MONITORS 


Amdek 

300A Amber.$149 

310 A. 199 

300 Clr. 299 

500 Clr RGB. 449 

600 Clr HR. 549 

700 Clr Ultra HR. 629 

710 Clr Non Glare .... 649 
NEC 

JB1201-12" Green.$169 

JB1260-12" Green .... 119 

JC1216 RGB. 429 

Panasonic 

CT160 10" comp. Call 

PGS 

HX12 RGB Clr.$489 

MAX 12. 189 

SRI2 (690 x 480 Res)... 639 
Doubler Card. 175 

Quadram 

Quadchrome.$489 

Sanyo 

8112 12" HR Green.... $195 

Taxan 

440.$679 


USI 1200A 

12" HR Am.$139 

Zenith 

135 (RGB or comp).... $499 

136 . 669 


MODEMS 


Hayes 

Smartmodem 300.$195 

Smartmodem 1200.... 489 
Smartmodem 1200B... 399 

Prometheus 

Promodem.$399 

Quadram 

Quadmodem.$529 

US Robotics 

Auto-Dial 300/1200... $459 

S-l 00 Modem. 349 

Password. 525 

Zoom Telephonies 

Networker w/o SW ... $109 



C. Itoh Electronics, Inc. 


Prowriter 

8510 AP (Par).$349 

8510 PC-II (Ser) 

(w/ 3K Buffer).$499 

1515P. 599 

Starwriter 

F10-40P (40cps).$999 

A10-20S (20cps). 529 

Diablo 

630 ECS. Call 

Juki Industries 

6100.$399 

NEC . Call 

Okidata 82-93. Call 

Printek, Inc. 

920 S/P.$2050 

Quadram 

Quadjet. Call 

Star Micronics . Call 

Teletex T1014.$399 

Transtar 

T-130 P&S.$659 

T-315 P-Dot Matrix.. 489 
T-120 P&S. 475 


. and much more. 


DISKETTES 

3M, CDC, Maxell, 
Verbatim, Ultra 
Magnetics. Call 


PLOTTERS 


Amdek 

DXY-100.$599 

Amplot II. 899 


Enter 

Sweet P Six Shooter... Call 

Houston Instruments Call 
Panasonic 

VP6801P Plotter.$1375 


MISC. 


Alpha-Delta MACC 


Surge Protector.$ 69 

Computer Accessories 

Power Director. Call 

Electronic 
Protection Devices 

Lemon / EC I.$ 45 

Lime / EC II. 65 

Orange / EC IV . 105 

Hauppage 

87 Chip.$159 

Other Products. Call 

Kensington 

Masterpiece. Call 

Keytronic 

KB 5150.$169 

KB 5151. 175 

KB 5151 Dvorak. 175 

Street Electronics . Call 

TG . Call 

Versa Computing 

VersaWriter.$239 


A variety of complete 
PC compatible systems 
are avail able at Oryx. 
For assistance in 
determining your needs 
use our technical line* 
We will be happy to 
provide full support. 


POLICY: 

► Wisconsin residents add 5% for sales tax. 

► Minimum $4.00 for shipping, handling and insurance 
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ONLY 2% for shipping, handling and insurance. 

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Inquiry 241 for Hardware. Inquiry 242 for Software. Inquiry 243 for February Specials. 



ORYX SYSTEMS, INC. 

CRAFTSMEN OF THE NEW TECHNOLOGY 

I 800 826-1589 

WISCONSIN 1800 472-3535 

425 First Street • PO. Box 1961 
Wausau, Wisconsin 54401 

INT’L TELEX: 260181 ORYX SYS WAU 


FEBRUARY 1985 ‘BYTE 419 






































































































































LETTERS 


each time anything is to be accomplished, 
his program succeeds in accomplishing its 
task simply and clearly with only one 
GOTO and only four GOSUB instructions 
in the body of the program, plus the two 
recursive GOSUB instructions in each sub¬ 
routine. Only five line numbers are ref¬ 
erenced in the entire program. 

The problem with the "structured 
BASIC" proponents is that in general they 
want us to write BASIC programs as if they 
were really Pascal. Let's face it: It may be 
proper German to put a verb at the end 
of a sentence, but in English that is bad 
grammar. The goal is to write clear pro¬ 
grams. What purpose would have been 
served by inserting in Mr. Spencer's pro¬ 
gram lines such as: 

31 GOSUB 40 ’ initialize 

32 GOSUB 140 ’ get data, do basic stats 

33 GOSUB 240 ’ do means 

The goal is to write clearly with the tools 
given us. not to emulate one language 
from within another. 

W. Howard Cornelsen !r. 

Houston, TX 

The September issue was outstanding. 
TWo programs presented in it—Cluster 
Analysis" by Rob Spencer and "Fractals" 
by Peter R. S0rensen—give the micro 
owner a wonderful opportunity to use a 
program running on a computer as a way 
of understanding important phenomena. 
This aspect of computer literacy is not 
often stressed, and articles such as these 
serve such a purpose. 

Benjamin W. White 
Tiburon, CA 

Database Types 


Every once in a while BYTE carries an ar¬ 
ticle that really makes me sit up and take 
notice. 1 wish that I had seen Rich Kra- 
jewski's article. "Database Types" (October 
1984, page 137), a couple of years ago. 

I had need of a database program to run 
on my Commodore 64 but really had no 
way to know which program to buy. Ac¬ 
tually, none that I read about sounded 
right for me. So I wrote my own. Now. as 
I am in the middle of revising my program, 
I discover in your October issue that I have 
a "free-format database." Too bad I didn't 
know what to look for before. But, actual¬ 
ly. I'm not sure that there was, or is, such 
a program for the Commodore 64. 

I teach at Southern Arkansas University- 
El Dorado. Each year I need to select an 
outstanding student from science and 
math to be honored at graduation. And 


I need to select students for nomination 
to "Who's Who." Frequently I hear from 
a student who would like me to write a let¬ 
ter of recommendation. With my Database 
program, I can print out my records for 
all students that got an A for any particular 
semester, and in any particular course if 
needed. Or I can print out all the infor¬ 
mation that I have on a particular student. 

Recently I have been computerizing my 
card file. When finished, I will be able to 
call up all references to databases, or to 
dot-matrix printers, or on using solar 
energy to heat pools. 

If any reader of BYTE would be in¬ 
terested in trying "Database" on his Com¬ 
modore 64, send me a disk and a check 
for $5. I’ll return a copy of the program 
and documentation. 

Jack Ryan 
Rte. 5, Box 244 
El Dorado, AR 71730 

I have been searching for databases that 
will fulfill my own requirements as well as 
requirements for clients over the past 
several months and found your articles 
very helpful. There was, however, one 
change to your coverage that other 
"searchers" might find helpful. Savvy, by 
Excalibur, now runs on MS-DOS as well 
as on its own operating system. It requires 
MS-DOS version 2.0 or later. With this en¬ 
hancement. I have found it to be an 
unbeatable value for most applications. It 
is easy to use. complete, powerful, and 
very well supported. Its documentation is 
excellent, a real rarity in the market¬ 
place—and in the industry. 

Warren S. Nakisher 
Falls Church, VA 

What s Friendly"? 


I wonder if you have any idea how over¬ 
used and undefined the word “friendly" 
is when used to describe a computer sys¬ 
tem? I have found that every user commu¬ 
nity has a different idea about that, and 
even the same users will feel differently 
about it with use. 

I believe we should be simply talking to 
our users rather than trying to define 
friendly within the computer community. 
This kind of action requires that we get 
hardware and operating systems that are 
as flexible as possible and that we write 
applications to react to the needs of the 
users. This is hard to do when writing for 
a large unknown user, and perhaps this 
is the reason most software is deemed 
unfriendly. 

I think the most unfriendly operating sys¬ 


tem is UNIX, but I really like that system, 
and many users will call it friendly because 
it is flexible and permits the programmer 
to write friendly applications. I would be 
interested to hear comments on this. 

John L. Beal 
Phoenix, AZ 

Pseudorandom Numbers 


Your article by Charles A. Whitney entitled 
"Generating and Testing Pseudorandom 
Numbers" (October 1984, page 128) is a 
good tutorial on examining the periodici¬ 
ty of pseudorandom sequences used in 
Monte Carlo and other simulation tech¬ 
niques. Tb this end. I would like to con¬ 
tribute the two-line program below for 
IBM PC DOS 2.0 to further demonstrate 
the inherent periodicity of the BASICA 
RND (and other) pseudorandom functions. 

10 RANDOMIZE TIMER: KEY OFF: 

SCREEN 1: CLS 
20 X = 320*RND: Y = 200*RND: 

C = 4*RND: PSET (X, Y), C: GOTO 20 

The program is intended to graphically 
demonstrate periodicity as spatial/color 
banding. Such banding indicates a clear 
recurrence of pseudorandom triplets re¬ 
peatedly formed for X, Y, and color. 

Other than an interesting star-like twink¬ 
ling effect, this graphical technique has 
considerable value in visually inspecting 
both the periodicity and distribution 
(uniform. Gaussian, etc.) of other pseudo¬ 
random sequences. 

H. J. Sommer III 
University Park, PA 

The Origin of "FOO.BAR” 


I have been working with computers for 
26 years, and I still don’t know the origin 
of the words "FOO" and "BAR" which ap¬ 
pear in just about every language manual 
I’ve read. 

Are they Ada Lovelace's boyfriend's mid¬ 
dle names? Or perhaps they are magic 
words from an early adventure game. 
(They never work for me.) 

Someone out there must know. 

Peter Smith 
Kenmore, Australia 

We believe FOO.BAR'' started out as 
"FUBAR, an unofficial military acronym 
for Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition. 
Perhaps often used as a test filename, 
FUBAR may have been altered to 
FOOBAR when a large computer manu¬ 
facturer's file specification required six 
characters. We re curious too.m 


420 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 









WHAT'S NEW 


PC Chinese Software Bridge 



T he CCC-PC Chinese 
Character Generator 
Card from Multitech In¬ 
dustrial Corporation lets you 
run Chinese applications 
software on your IBM 55 50 
and IBM PC. This card plugs 
into an IBM expansion slot 
and gives you the ability to 
display and print out 
Chinese characters. 

The CCC-PC card stores 
Chinese characters in a 
2-byte international code 
using a technique known as 
the Dragon Coding Method. 
This method is said to 
reduce 17.000 characters to 
24 alphabet-like symbols. 

The CCC-PC supports the 


A n IBM PC-compatible 
color-graphics display 
board for S-100 bus systems 
is available from CompuPro. 
The PC Video Board runs 
under CompuPro's Concur¬ 
rent DOS 8-16 with Digital 
Research's IBM PC-com- 
patibility module, and it 
works with Digital Research's 
GSX graphics software. 

Built around the Motorola 
6845 video-display con¬ 
troller, this board can be 
programmed to produce an 
assortment of timing charac¬ 
teristics for a variety of 
color and monochrome 
monitors. It features 16K 
bytes of static CMOS RAM, 


method in two modes: one 
for beginners and the other 
for experienced Chinese 
encoders. 

Other input/output 
methods on the CCC-PC in¬ 
clude telegraphies, lightning, 
national phonetic alphabet, 
and internal code dictionary. 

The CCC-PC supports IBM- 
compatible TTL-input mono¬ 
chrome monitors with a 
40-character by 2 5-line dis¬ 
play for Chinese characters 
and an 80 by 25 format for 
ASCII characters. The resolu¬ 
tion uses a 16- by 16-dot 
character cell. 

The CCC-PC is available to 
original equipment manufac- 


24-bit memory addressing, 
16-bit addressing for I/O 
ports, and variable wait 
states, which provide in¬ 
dependent access to up to 
eight boards. 

In its color mode, the 
board permits graphics 
screens of 160 (horizontal) 
by 200 pixels (vertical) in 16 
colors using an alphanu¬ 
meric 4- by 2-dot character 
box. 320 by 200 pixels in 
four colors, or 640 by 200 
pixels in one color plus 
black. 

The alphanumeric screen 
uses an 80 or 40 by 2 5 for¬ 
mat and an 8- by 8-dot 
cell with a 7- by 7-dot 


turers and end users. Con¬ 
tact Mr. William Lu, Multi¬ 
tech Industrial Corp., 266 
Sung Chiang Rd., Taipei, 


character within the box. A 
2 56-character ROM gener¬ 
ates uppercase and lower¬ 
case characters with single- 
line descenders. Direct-drive 
outputs include horizontal 
sync, vertical sync, RGB TTL, 
and half- and full-intensity. 

In its monochrome mode, 
the PC Video Board pro¬ 
duces a graphics screen 
with a 320 or 640 by 200 
resolution. Its alphanumeric 
screen in this mode has the 
same column and line sizes 
as in the color mode but 
uses a 9- by 14-dot charac¬ 
ter cell with a 8- by 12-dot 
character. The 2 56-character 
ROM generates character 
sizes in upper- and lower¬ 
cases with fully formed 
descenders and such charac¬ 
ter attributes as underline, 
blanking, and reverse video. 
Direct-drive outputs include 
horizontal sync, vertical 
sync, video dots, and half- 
and full-intensity. 

The PC Video Board is 
$495. Contact CompuPro. 
3506 Breakwater Court, 
Hayward. CA 94545. (415) 
786-0909. 

Inquiry 616. 


Taiwan, Republic of China; 
tel: (02) 551-1101; Tfelex: 
19162 MULTIIC. 

Inquiry 615. 

2K Programmable 
Microcontroller 


T he MC-1Z is a 3- by 
4-inch microcontroller 
with 2K bytes of RAM and 
40 fully programmable I/O 
lines. Its resident program¬ 
ming language is Integer 
BASIC, making the MC-1Z 
suitable for such applica¬ 
tions as instrumentation and 
process control. 

This board is built around 
a Zilog 8671 microproces¬ 
sor. It can be upgraded to 
16K bytes of RAM. or it may 
be equipped with a 4K- or 
8K-byte EPROM. Standard 
equipment includes a clock/ 
calendar, two timer/counters, 
six interrupts, and an EPROM 
receptacle. With more 
cabling, the MC-1Z can be 
linked to an RS-232C terminal 
for applications programming. 
Its data rates range from 110 
to 19,200 bps. 

The MC-1Z comes with 
complete hardware and soft¬ 
ware manuals. Prices begin 
at less than $200. Contact 
Basicon Inc., 11895 North¬ 
west Cornell Rd.. Portland, 

OR 97229, (503) 626-1012. 
Inquiry 617. 

( continued ) 



IBM PC Color-Graphics Board for S-100 


FEBRUARY 1985 ‘BYTE 421 

















WHAT'S NEW 


ADD-INS 


X.25 Interface for PC A/D Cards 


T he PC-X25 is an X.2 5 
communications inter- 
face for the IBM Personal 
Computer. A plug-in board, 
the PC-X2 5 comes with sup- 


C heckmate Technology 
has announced the 
MultiView 80/160 Card, a 
video card that displays 
from 80 to 160 characters 
per line on a 12-MHz 
monitor. The MultiView 
80/160's seven screen sizes 
are 80 characters by 24 
lines. 80 by 32. 80 by 48, 

96 by 24, 132 by 24, 132 by 
30. and 160 by 24. Screens 
longer than 24 lines require 
a monitor with a long- 
persistence phosphor. The 
user can view each screen 
size in wide-angle mode for 
easier reading. 

The MultiView 80/160 also 
adds up to five prompt lines 
to the standard screen 
display. The card uses an 8 
by 9 matrix with true 
descenders to create a 
letter-quality character set. 
Characters can be displayed 
as bold, inverse, normal, or 
underlined. You can reverse- 
scroll up to 4096 characters. 

The MultiView 80/160 in¬ 
stalls in the Apple lie's slot 
3. It lets you use the 64K 
bytes of memory of an ex¬ 
tended 80-column card in 
the auxiliary slot. Through 


porting software that pro¬ 
vides a menu-driven en¬ 
vironment for accessing net¬ 
work services, exchanging 
messages, and transmitting 


MultiView. you can access 
the extra 64 K bytes by using 
BASIC commands. The card 
is compatible with CP/M, 
Apple Pascal. DOS 3.3, and 
ProDOS. 


files. Data transmission rates 
range up to 19,200 bps. 

The PC-X2 5 has received 
PTT approval in the United 
Kingdom. France. Holland. 
Japan, and Switzerland. The 
manufacturer claims that ap¬ 
proval is imminent in the 
United States as well as the 
rest of Europe and Aus¬ 
tralasia. 

The single-license charge 
is £1000. Contact S-Com 
Computer Systems Engi¬ 
neers Inc.. Tower House. 

High St., Aylesbury, Buck¬ 
inghamshire, HP20 ISO, 
England; tel: (0296) 32023; 
Telex: 837520 ADTRAV G. 


MultiView is priced at 
$349.95. Contact Checkmate 
Technology Inc.. 509 South 
Rockford Dr., Tempe, AZ 
85281-3021. (602) 966-5802. 


phone dialer, modem or 
remote-terminal print, and 
screen time-display utilities 
package. 

The price for the complete 
package is $23 5. Contact 
AST Research Inc.. 2121 
Alton Ave.. Irvine. CA 92714, 
(714) 476-3868. 

Inquiry 620 


language programs, which 
can be set to run when the 
Apple is booted up. 

The Greeting Card requires 
48K bytes of RAM and a 
disk drive. The price is 
$69.95. Contact Birchem 
Computer Products. 5728 
Thames Way. Carmichael, CA 
95608. (916) 489-7542. 

Inquiry 621 


A ction Instruments offers 
a line of plug-in. IBM 
PC-compatible analog and 
digital I/O cards for in¬ 
dustrial process and 
laboratory applications. 

The ACIP-AI04 accepts 4 
analog inputs, transmits 2 
analog outputs, and pro¬ 
vides 12 channels of con¬ 
figurable digital I/O, all with 
12-bit resolution. The AICP- 
AI016, also with 12-bit 
resolution, accepts 16 single- 
ended or 8 fully differential 
inputs. The AICP-AI08 
handles 8 single-ended, 

± 5-volt inputs and provides 
7 channels of digital I/O. 

Both the AICP-RTD15 and 
the -TCI 5 are designed for 
temperature applications. 
Each accepts up to 15 input 
channels and provides 
500-volt input-to-expansion 
bus signal isolation. 

The AICP-SG4 enables the 
IBM PC to monitor and con¬ 
trol force, strain, and 
pressure applications. A 
general-purpose. low-level 
analog card, the SG4 pro¬ 
vides 8 outputs and sources 
its own excitation voltages 
for direct connection to load 
cells, strain gauges, and 
pressure transducers. Also 
standard are front-end filter¬ 
ing and individual on-board 
channel alarm set points. 

The AICP-DIM32 has 32 
input channels, and the 
-DOM32 has 32 output 
channels. Both are designed 
for interfacing multiple 
digital signals to the IBM PC 
and can connect with 
industrial, isolated high-level 
I/O racks. They provide 
positive or negative true 
TTL-compatible logic levels. 

Prices range from $2 50 for 
the AICP-DIM32 to $1295 
for the thermocouple. RTD, 
and strain-gauge cards. Con¬ 
tact Action Instruments Inc.. 
8601 Aero Dr.. San Diego, 

CA 92123. (619) 279-5726. 
Inquiry 622. 


A ST Research's Multi-I/O 
board for the Apple lie 
offers a serial printer port, a 
communications serial port, 
and a ProDOS-compatible 
clock/calendar with battery 
backup. It also includes an 
on-disk tutorial program, 
clock read/set, text-file 
listing, graphics dump, 

Greeting Card Security 


T he Greeting Card 

prevents unauthorized 
use of your Apple II. 11 + . or 
He. This single card has a 
2K-byte nonvolatile memory 
that holds a security pro¬ 
gram that gives your Apple 
password protection. It can 
be used for posting short 
messages, and it can hold 
up to eight assembly- 



inquiry 619 

Multifunction Card for Apple lie 


422 B Y T E • FEBRUARY 1985 

















WHAT’S NEW 


PERIPHERALS 


Omninet for the Mac High-Speed Printer 


C orvus Systems' Omninet 
local-area network can 
connect up to 63 Macin¬ 
toshes at distances up to 
4000 feet and run at 0.7 
megabits per second. This 
card is built into the com¬ 
puter interface cable; you 
plug the cable into the 
modem port of the Mac. 

The connections for Omni¬ 
net are $200. Disk drive 
costs depend on amount of 
memory: $1795 for 5 mega¬ 
bytes. $2495 for 10 mega¬ 
bytes. $3495 for 16 mega¬ 
bytes, and $4995 for 4 5 
megabytes. Contact Corvus 
Systems Inc., 2100 Corvus 
Dr., San lose, CA 95124, 
(408) 559-7000. 

Inquiry 623. 


T he OT-700 dot-matrix 
printer from Output 
Technology uses an ad¬ 
vanced print-head technique 
to reach a maximum speed 
of 700 characters per sec¬ 
ond. It also features corre¬ 
spondence-quality printing 
at 3 50 cps and dot-address- 
able graphics capability in 
two modes: 50 by 69 dots 
per inch for high speed or 
100 by 69 dpi for high 
resolution. 

Centronics parallel and 
RS-232C serial interfaces 
and a 4K-byte buffer are 
standard. You use menu- 
driven program commands 
to configure the OT-700. 
Numerous character sets, in¬ 
cluding foreign languages, 


are offered. 

The printer has 136-col- 
umn carriage width, and 
paper feeds from the front 
or bottom of the case. The 
control panel features mem¬ 
brane switches and LED in¬ 


dicator lights. 

The OT-700 sells for $1595. 
Contact Output Technology 
Corp., Suite 205, 606 110th 
Ave. NE. Bellevue. WA 
98004, (206) 453-9794. 
Inquiry 624. 




Multiuser Hard Disk for the IBM 


A multiuser, 38-megabyte 
hard-disk drive for the 
IBM PC or PC XT is avail¬ 
able from Adcomp. Up to 
16 microcomputers can ac¬ 
cess the system, which in¬ 
cludes a removable 6-mega- 
byte disk drive for backup. 
Its modular design lets you 
expand it to use more com¬ 
puters and up to 100 mega¬ 
bytes of memory. 

Adcomp also offers ready¬ 


made file administration for 
multiuser applications. One 
computer supervises the ac¬ 
cess administration for the 
others while it remains func¬ 
tional as a workstation. 

The hard-disk system costs 
$3995. Contact Adcomp 
Datensysteme GmbH. Olga- 
strasse 15, D—8000 Munich 
19; tel: 011 (49) 89-129-80- 
45; Tblex: 52 16 271. 

Inquiry 625. 


Graphics and Letter-Quality Print 


S tar Micronics has an¬ 
nounced the Star SB-10, 
a letter-quality, dot-matrix 
printer. The Star SB-10 pro¬ 
duces text at two speed and 
quality settings: letter quali¬ 
ty at 60 cps and draft quali¬ 
ty at 120 cps. It also can 
combine letter-quality text 
with graphics. 

The printer's character 
fonts include pica, elite, con¬ 
densed, proportional, ex¬ 
panded. emphasized, and 
double-strike. It has a stan¬ 
dard Centronics parallel in¬ 


terface plus optional serial 
(RS-232C) and GPIB 
(IEEE-488) interfaces. Some 
of the Star SB-10's features 
are continuous underline, 
vertical and horizontal pro¬ 
grammable tabs, self-test, 
left and right margin set, 
and bit-image column scan. 

The Star SB-10 is $995. 

For details, contact Star 
Micronics Inc., 200 Park 
Ave., New York, NY 10166, 
(212) 986-6770. 

Inquiry 626. 

( continued ) 



FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 423 























WHAT'S NEW 


NEW SYSTEMS 


Passport Comes with Hard Disk 



A nderson Jacobson's AJ 
Passport/PH D desktop 
computer gives you both 
floppy- and hard-disk 
storage. The system behind 
the storage has 2 56K bytes 
of dynamic RAM, on-board 
color, graphics, and five ex¬ 
pansion bus slots. An MS- 
DOS 2.11-compatible oper¬ 
ating system, TeleDOS con¬ 
trols operations. 

Based around Intel's 8088 
microprocessor, the Pass- 
port/PHD comes with an 
asynchronous RS-232C serial 
communications port, a 
parallel Centronics-type 
printer port, a single internal 
IBM PC-format bus slot, and 
RGB and composite-video 
connections. It has fifteen 
data rates, ranging from 50 
to 9600 bps. 

The slimline 514-inch 
floppy-disk drive provides 
360K bytes of formatted 
storage, and the 3‘/ 2 -inch 
hard disk offers 10 mega¬ 
bytes. The floppy-disk 
transfer rate is 2 50K bits per 
second. The hard disk offers 
a 5-megabit per second 
transfer rate. 

The Passport/PHD has a 
12-inch amber display with a 
nonglare surface that tilts 
and swivels. Graphics capa¬ 
bilities are supported by 
16K bytes of dedicated 
memory. The monochrome 


display resolution is 640 by 
200 pixels. The color resolu¬ 
tion is 320 by 300 pixels. 

The IBM PC-style keyboard 
features 83 keys, with a 
numeric pad and 10 pro¬ 
grammable function keys. 

The Passport/PHD is 


$4095. which includes in¬ 
tegrated word-processing, 
spreadsheet, and database- 
management programs. Con¬ 
tact Anderson Jacobson, 521 
Charcot Ave.. San Jose, CA 
95131, (408) 94 5-9030. 

Inquiry 627. 


A Wyse Line of IBM 
PC-Compatibles 

W yse Technology has 
unveiled a line of IBM 
PC-compatible computers. 

The WYSEpc Model 
WY-1100-1 is an entry-level 
system. It comes with a pair 
of 360K-byte double-density 
floppy-disk drives, 2 56K 
bytes of RAM, two serial 
ports, and a parallel printer 
port. A 14-inch tilt-and- 
swivel monochrome display 
and a 101-key keyboard are 
standard. TWo expansion 
slots provide room for IBM 
PC-compatible options. 

The IBM PC XT-compatible 
Model 1100-2 comes with a 
10-megabyte Winchester 
hard-disk drive and one 
floppy-disk unit. 

Both units are shipped 
with MS-DOS 2.11 and GW- 
BASIC and are offered with 
a color graphics option. 
Other options include 2 56K 
bytes of RAM, a real-time 
clock/calendar, battery 
backup, and an expansion 
chassis with four IBM PC- 
compatible slots. 

The Model 1100-1 is 
$1995, while the Model 
1100-2 is $3495. The color 
graphics option is $500. 
Contact Wyse Technology, 
3040 North First St., San 
lose, CA 95134, (408) 
946-3075. 

Inquiry 628 


Datapoint Announces 32-bit Computer 


T he Datapoint 3200. a 
32-bit computer has a 
UNIX-like operating system 
known as UNOS. The 3200 
can serve as a stand-alone 
system and as a member of 
Datapoint's ARC intelligent 
local-network system. 

UNOS, which is said to op¬ 
timize 68000 performance, 
provides such file-manage¬ 
ment capabilities as multi¬ 
tasking, device-independent 
I/O, dynamic file allocation, 


I/O redirection, and hier¬ 
archical directory structure. 

Software options for the 
3200 include C. RM/COBOL, 
and a business programming 
language. Ace Microsystem's 
LEX word processor and 
Microsoft's Multiplan are 
supported. 

The 3200 has dual 68000 
microprocessors. One 68000 
has a 4K-byte cache 
memory for application pro¬ 
cessing at a 12.5-MHz clock 


rate. The second 68000 
organizes I/O. 

Presently, two models are 
available with a variety of 
options, including up to 8 
megabytes of RAM, three 
types of terminals, three dif¬ 
ferent printers, and a 
2780/3780 communications 
adapter. The 3200 can sup¬ 
port 28 Datapoint terminals. 

An entry-level 3200 comes 
with 1 megabyte of RAM. 
cache memory, and four 


serial ports. A 1-megabyte 
8-inch floppy disk and a 
3 2-megabyte hard disk pro¬ 
vide mass storage. The base 
system price is $15,430 
through Datapoint's ISO and 
end-user direct-sales force. 
UNOS is $1000, and a net¬ 
work adapter is $2 500. For 
more information, contact 
Datapoint Corp., 972 5 Data¬ 
point Dr., San Antonio. TX 
78284, (800) 334-1122. 

Inquiry 629. 


424 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 















WHAT'S NEW 


SOFTWARE • APPLE 


Musical Macintosh 


E ven if you can’t read a 
note of music, you can 
use MusicWorks to create 
and perform music on a 
Macintosh. MacroMind. 
developer of the software, 
claims the program enables 
anyone to compose and edit 
simple melodies or fully or¬ 
chestrated symphonies. The 
compositions can then be 
played back with as many as 
four voices simultaneously 
over an eight-octave range, 
and you can assign each 


MacManage Projects 


A project-management 
tool for the Macintosh, 
MacProject enables you to 
draw a schedule on the 
screen and enter beginning 
dates, required completion 
dates, resources, and fixed 
and variable cost data for 
each task. MacProject then 
calculates the start and 
finish dates. 

The program features 
"what-if" analytical capabil¬ 
ity that lets you instantly re¬ 
calculate dates, resources, 
and expenses when vari¬ 
ables are introduced into a 
project. You can cut and 
paste sections of projects 
into other project schedules 
or into files created with 
MacWrite. You can also 
transfer cost data to 
Multiplan for further 
analysis. Schedules, 
resources, and tasks can be 
represented in tables. 

MacProject can accom¬ 
modate up to 200 jobs on 
the 128K-byte Macintosh 
and up to 2000 jobs on the 
Lisa 2 or the 512K-byte 
Macintosh. Available from 
authorized Apple dealers, 
the package has a suggested 
retail price of $12 5. Contact 
Apple Computer Inc., 2052 5 
Mariani Ave.. Cupertino, CA 
95014, (408) 996-1010. 

Inquiry 631 


voice any one of eight 
musical instruments. You can 
vary the tempo, intensity, 
timbre, and meter. 

MusicWorks features two 
composing options. In the 
first method, you place 
notes and rests on a con¬ 
ventional staff. In the sec¬ 
ond method, you place 
boxes on a matrix grid that 
resembles the keys of a 
piano. The program auto¬ 
matically updates the com¬ 
position in standard notation 


High-Level Language 


B ased on the FORTH lan¬ 
guage model, SkyForth 
1.3 is a development system 
for the Apple II series. Ac¬ 
cording to the vendor, Sky¬ 
Forth can execute 10 itera¬ 
tions of the Sieve of 
Eratosthenes benchmark in 
139 seconds and alpha¬ 
betize 2000 five-character 
names in 5.2 seconds. 

The language, including its 
source-code editor, resides 
in the upper 16K bytes of 
the computer. Since the 
editor/compiler is always 
resident, you can write, com¬ 
pile. and test programs 
quickly. SkyForth reads and 
writes its programs as con¬ 
tinuous Apple DOS 3.3 files. 
You can save finished pro¬ 
grams and overlays as ob¬ 
ject code. 

The developer features a 
full assembler, utility and 
debugging routines, and a 
turnkey, run-time package. 
SkyForth's kernel includes 
words to handle floating¬ 
point math, 32-bit integers, 
memory moves, sorts, list 
structures, and windowed 
graphics. 

A single-user license costs 
$99. Contact Tosch Informa¬ 
tion Management, Dept. S. 
1602 5 10th Ave. SW. Seattle. 
WA 98166, (206) 246-3839. 
Inquiry 632. 


and can print scores for one 
instrument or for an 
ensemble. 

The program comes with 
sample songs that you can 
edit and rearrange. The 
manual includes an introduc¬ 
tion to the basics of music. 

MusicWorks for the Apple 
Macintosh costs $79.95 and 
is being marketed by 
Hayden Software Company 
Inc., 600 Suffolk St., Lowell, 
MA 01854, (617) 937-0200. 
Inquiry 630. 


Introduction to CAD 


W ith CADAPPLE-Entry 
Level, you can learn 
and apply the fundamentals 
of computer-aided design 
(CAD). The program features 
menus and single-stroke 
operation, built-in error 
recovery, and floating-point 
internal calculations. 

The package provides 
lines, arcs, circles, rectangles, 
ellipses, polygons, and text. 
You can select grid spacing 
and divisions in both x and 
y axes independently, in 
"real world” coordinates, 
and change them at any 
time. You can input with a 
keyboard, joystick, mouse, 
or KoalaPad. Any distance 
can be dimensioned 
automatically. You can scale 
objects or groups of objects 
independently, rotate them 
to any degree, or delete (or 
undelete) them. Windowing 
functions let you zoom in 
and out of a drawing or pan 
across it. Drawings are done 
on a plotter. 

CADAPPLE—Entry Level 
costs $495 and runs on an 
Apple II or 11+ with 64K 
bytes of memory and on an 
Apple lie or He. Contact T & 
W Systems Inc.. Suite 106, 
7372 Prince Dr., Huntington 
Beach, CA 92647. (714) 
847-9960. 

Inquiry 633. 


System Helps You 
Search Information 
Databases 


S earchware has 

developed a software 
system that enables an 
Apple computer to access 
and search information data¬ 
bases. The system empha¬ 
sizes a knowledge of the 
subject you are investigating 
rather than familiarity with 
the search procedures of 
each database. 

According to the company, 
you don't need to know the 
syntax of search commands. 
The program asks you to 
identify key words in the 
subject of interest; the 
search strategy is then 
developed off line, which 
can reduce search-time 
charges. When the strategy 
is complete, the computer 
automatically dials the 
phone number of the data¬ 
base. logs on. transmits the 
search strategy, records the 
results of the search either 
on paper or on floppy disk, 
and then logs off and dis¬ 
connects. 

You can search at three 
levels. The first level takes 
care of commands, syntax, 
and logic. At the second 
level, the software develops 
and transmits the search 
commands, but you create 
the logic. The third level lets 
you search on line. 

Searchware bills monthly 
for search-time charges. 

There is no minimum 
monthly charge. 

The company is offering 
an automated demonstration 
program for $15. No modem 
is required to run this pro¬ 
gram. Complete software 
packages start at $290. A 
version for the IBM PC is 
also available. Contact 
Searchware Inc., Suite E. 
22458 Ventura Blvd., Wood¬ 
land Hills. CA 91364, (818) 
992-4325. 

Inquiry 634. 

( continued ) 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 425 












WHAT’S NEW 


SOFTWARE • CP/M/MS-DOS 

WordStar Commands Placed on Function Keys 


eys Please! with Instant 
Install gives WordStar 
users the convenience of 
single-keystroke operation. 
This enhancement package, 
published by Precision Soft¬ 
ware Products, places all 
140 WordStar commands 
onto function keys and 
automatically activates all 
WordStar's printer capabili¬ 
ties, including condensed, 
bold, and italics. Commands 


B ackRest 2.0 is a hard¬ 
disk drive backup pro¬ 
gram for such operating sys¬ 
tems as CP/M-86. MS-DOS. 
and MP/M. When used with 
CP/M-86, BackRest will trap 
hard system errors, even 
though that operating 
system does not support 
error trapping. 

BackRest can interrupt a 
backup at any time to per¬ 
form a priority task or to 


L attice has announced 
the availability of an 
automated product genera¬ 
tion utility for MS-DOS. 
Called LMK. this product 
functions like a UNIX MAKE 
facility. LMK is designed to 
facilitate the making of 
alterations in a variety of 
source files. It eliminates the 
manual reconstruction of a 
product's source files. Its 
scope in constructing soft¬ 
ware. documentation, or file 
systems is limitless. 

Here's what LMK does: 
Once you have specified the 
relationships between vari¬ 
ous pieces of a system, such 
as source modules, object 
modules, or chapters of a 
manuscript, in a dependen¬ 
cy file.'' you can invoke a 
single LMK command to 
automatically rebuild the 


are grouped by function, 
and an on-screen command 
summary line eliminates the 
need for rote memorization 
of key combinations. 

Hardware modifications or 
optional boards are not re¬ 
quired. Keys Please! with In¬ 
stant Install runs on CP/M 
2.2. CP/M-80, CP/M 3.0, 
TbrboDOS, CDOS, and 
Cromix systems with 56K 
bytes of RAM. It also works 


format additional floppy 
disks. After the interruption, 
it can resume the backup 
procedure from where it left 
off. It locks out bad sectors 
on the hard disk, and it sup¬ 
ports backups to most file- 
oriented tape devices. Stan¬ 
dard features include op¬ 
tional restoration to an alter¬ 
nate drive, automatic re¬ 
storation. the ability to split 
large files over several flop- 


system. LMK's actions can 
be any executable com¬ 
mand. such as invoking a 
batch text editor to make 
replacements in a number 
of files, applying a file com¬ 
parator to new and old files, 
updating a database, or run¬ 
ning utilities. 

Minimum system re¬ 
quirements are 320K bytes 
of floppy-disk capacity. 128K 


S oftware Connections has 
announced a line of net¬ 
work applications software 
that works with Microsoft's 
Networks 1.0 network-operat¬ 
ing system extension. Prod¬ 
ucts available include a rela¬ 
tional database-management 
system, a relational data- 


with MS-DOS and PC-DOS 
version Lx or 2.x computers 
with 128K bytes of RAM. 

T\vo disk drives are required. 
A variety of printers are 
supported. The suggested 
list price is $69.95. For more 
information, contact Preci¬ 
sion Software Products. 

Suite 204. 360 17th St.. 
Oakland. CA 94612. (415) 
839-5780. 

Inquiry 635 


py disks, backup of sparse 
files, and local-area network 
support. 

Other DOSes supported 
include PC-DOS, Concurrent 
CP/M, CP/M 2.2. CP/M Plus, 
MP/M-86, and TlirboDOS. 
The suggested retail price is 
$180. Contact Stok Software 
Inc.. 17 West 17th St.. New 
York. NY 10011. (212) 
243-1444. 

Inquiry 636 


bytes of RAM. and MS-DOS 
2.0 or 3.0. It runs on com¬ 
puters based on 8086, 8088, 
80186. or 80286 micropro¬ 
cessors. The suggested retail 
price for LMK with full 
documentation is $195. For 
further information, contact 
Lattice Inc.. POB 3072. Glen 
Ellyn. IL 60138. (312) 
858-7950. 

Inquiry 637. 


base-applications develop¬ 
ment tool, and a store-and- 
forward electronic-mail file- 
transfer system. 

Contact Software Connec¬ 
tions, 2041 Mission College 
Blvd.. Santa Clara. CA 
95054, (408) 988-0300. 
Inquiry 638 


Integrated Package 
Grows with You 


T ymIV is an integrated 
software package that 
can be expanded as your 
needs increase. The basic 
package, known as An¬ 
thology. comes with word¬ 
processing. spreadsheet 
analysis, and database- 
management capabilities. 

For more sophisticated data 
management, there's Six. a 
universal database package 
that lets you save, recall, 
and edit large quantities of 
information and print stan¬ 
dard or custom-designed 
reports, forms, and labels. 

At the heart of this 
package is a native C code 
master program called 
Execu/Bus. Execu/Bus serves 
as a common environment 
by generating uniform com¬ 
mands and screen presenta¬ 
tions for all applications. 
These commands control 
the start-up and completion 
of a task as well as provide 
an interface for data swap¬ 
ping among applications. 
Operating system utilities 
can be accessed through 
Execu/Bus. Utility functions 
include file backup and 
copy; rename, delete, and 
print file; and display direc¬ 
tory. A common help facility 
supports all applications. 

Presently, the manufacturer 
has 18 vertical and hori¬ 
zontal applications in the 
TymIV series, including 
financial application tem¬ 
plates. plotting software, 
banking packages, and com¬ 
munications. The TymIV 
series runs on MS-DOS. PC- 
DOS. and UNIX System V 
systems. Anthology is $495, 
and the suggested price for 
Six is $395. Specialized ap¬ 
plications range from $195 
to $1500. For details, con¬ 
tact InfoTym. TymIV 
Marketing. 20705 Valley 
Green Dr., Cupertino. CA 
95014. (408) 446-7406. 

Inquiry 639 



Hard-Disk Backup Traps Errors in CP/M-86 


Product Generation Utility Eases Rebuilding Process 


Software Connections Supports Networks 1.0 


426 B Y T E • FEBRUARY 1985 











WHAT'S NEW 


SOFTWARE • IBM PC 

Equation Processor Soft Winchester: Inexpensive, Alternative Hard Disk 


E quate is an equation 
processor for the IBM 
PC and compatibles using 
DOS 1.1 through 2.1. 

It lets you enter up to 799 
equations anywhere on 
screen in standard algebraic 
notation. A full-screen text 
editor facilitates equation 
and explanatory-text entry, 
and an interactive Constants 
Window gives you more 
than 400 physical constants 
and measurement conver¬ 
sions to insert into equa¬ 
tions. Equations or other 
constants can be added to 
the window. 

Equate evaluates your 
equations, prompts for 
undefined variables, and 
produces 16-bit (double¬ 
precision) results at the 
press of a function key. A 
forms feature helps you 
devise application work¬ 
sheets that prompt for data 
or arrange results into 
fables. Data cells can be 
sited at any spot on screen; 
rows or columns are not 
mandatory. 

Equations, results, and 
tables can be stored as 
worksheets. Worksheets may 
be printed or transferred to 
a word processor that ac¬ 
cepts ASCII files. 

The General Worksheet 
Series Disk I comes with 
Equate. It provides work¬ 
sheets for solving simulta¬ 
neous equations and for 
calculating standard devia¬ 
tion. variance, and the area 
and moments of inertia for 
principal shapes. 

Equate comes with an 
evaluation version that’s 
good for 30 uses. The 
master disk and related 
materials can be returned to 
the manufacturer within 30 
days for a full refund. 

Equate is $195. Contact Ban¬ 
yan Systems Corp.. 5632 
East Third St.. Tlicson. AZ 
85711, (602) 745-8086. 

Inquiry 640 


he BYSO Soft Win¬ 
chester program from 
Levien Instrument Company 
stores your most frequently 
used data in RAM so that 
you can access it quickly. 
The manufacturer says that 
with Soft Winchester such 
programs as WordStar and 
dBASE II will load or sort 
hundreds of times faster 
than from a floppy. 


Soft Winchester lets you 
use 1440K bytes of data. If 
you have data that cannot 
be accessed from RAM or 
disk, it prompts you for the 
disk with the data. It auto¬ 
matically backs up your data 
to disk, and. once loaded, 
its operation is transparent. 
A simple key combination 
lets you use new 1440K-byte 
sets of data. 


The FORTRAN compiler 
runs under VENIX on such 
machines as the IBMs, AT&T 
6300. Compaq Plus. Eagle 
Uirbo. MAD 1. and DEC Pro¬ 
fessional 350. It costs $395. 

Its UNIX operating system, 
claims Unisource, is the first 
licensed implementation of 
AT&T UNIX for the the IBM 
PC AT. This version is 


squares fitting can produce 
the standard curve using a 
polynomial (degree 1 to 6), 
geometric, or exponential 
least-squares method. Any 
or all fitting models can be 
used to select the best fit. 

Some statistical measures 
of the accuracy of the fitted 
curve provided are standard 


The BYSO Soft Winchester 
runs on 128K-byte IBM Per¬ 
sonal Computers, including 
the PCjr, and true IBM com¬ 
patibles. A monochrome or 
graphics adapter is required. 
It costs $60. For more infor¬ 
mation. contact Levien In¬ 
strument Co., POB 31. 
McDowell. VA 244 58, (703) 
396-3345. 

Inquiry 641 


delivered with a System V 
UNIX license. A full im¬ 
plementation for one or two 
users retails for $875. For 
up to eight users, it’s $1075. 

For further information, 
contact Unisource Software 
Corp.. 71 Bent St.. Cam¬ 
bridge. MA 02141, (617) 
491-1264. 

Inquiry 642. 


error of estimates and per¬ 
cent deviation for calculated 
versus observed values. 

Features include curve¬ 
fitting demonstrations, high- 
resolution (i.e., 320 by 200) 
graphics, choice of plotting 
symbols on the same graph 
for distinguishing multiple 
superimposed curves, the 
ability to enter data as x.y 
pairs or as values at fixed 
intervals, and four text-label 
locations. Working files can 
be saved and transferred to 
programs that accept ASCII 
data. 

Minimum requirements are 
128K bytes of RAM. color 
graphics board, a disk drive, 
and PC-DOS 1.1. 2.0. or 2.1. 
The manual alone is $15; 
the complete package is 
$95. Contact Interactive 
Microware Inc. POB 139. 
State College, PA 
16804-0139, (814) 238-8294. 
Inquiry 643. 


FORTRAN and UNIX for AT 


U nisource Software Cor¬ 
poration has introduced 
a UNIX-based FORTRAN-77 
compiler for the IBM PC XT 
and PC AT. In a related 
development, the Massa¬ 
chusetts-based publisher 
and distributor of UNIX soft¬ 
ware also announced an im¬ 
plementation of UNIX for 
the IBM PC AT. 


IBM Fits the Curves 


A curve-fitting program 
for the IBM PC, Curve 
Fitter-PC is available directly 
from Interactive Microware. 

Curve Fitter-PC fits curves 
to experimental or business 
data. Curve types include 
polynomial, cubic spline, or 
Stineman interpolation 
methods. If you want, least- 


WHERE DO NEW PRODUCT ITEMS COME FROM? 

The new products listed in this section of BYTE are chosen 
from the thousands of press releases, letters, and telephone 
calls we receive each month from manufacturers, distributors, 
designers, and readers. The basic criteria for selection for 
publication are: (a) does a product match our readers' in¬ 
terests? and (b) is it new or is it simply a reintroduction of 
an old item? Because of the volume of submissions we must 
sort through every month, the items we publish are based 
on vendors' statements and are not individually verified. If 
you want your product to be considered for publication (at 
no charge), send full information about it. including its price 
and an address and telephone number where a reader can 
get further information, to New Products Editor. BYTE. POB 
372, Hancock. NH 03449. 



FEBRUARY 1985 ‘BYTE 427 












Inquiry 302 


j3£ = l SUNTROlUiCS co.,nuc. 

12621 Crenshaw Blvd., Hawthorne, CA 90250 

NEW BRANCH STORE IN ORANGE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA 


1-800-421-5775 (Order Only) 

(213) 644-1 1 40 (CA Order & Inf.) 

STORE HOURS : 

Mon.-Fri. 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. 

Sat. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. 

17552 BEACH BLVD., #C. HUNTINGTON BEACH. CA 92647 (714) 842-1948 


TERMS VISA MASTER Card 
COD (Cash or Certified Check Re 
quired) CheckfAllow 2-3 WKS for 
Clearing) Shipping & H/C S3 00 for 3 
Lbs plus 50C for each add LB Calif 
residents add Calif Sales Tax S10 00 
Minimum Order 

IBM S Apple are registered trade 
marks of IBM & Apple 



XT Compatible 
Products 


FEATURES: 
lintel 8088 CPU 

lintel 8087 Math Co-Processor (Option) 

^Expandable on-board to 256K 

^128K RAM w/Parity 

isQ IBM Compatible Expansion Slots 

^4 Channel DMA 8237 

^8 Channel Interrupt 8259 

^Mother Board dimension same as IBM PC 

Mother Board W/128K RAM.$399.00 

Computer Cabinet.$69.00 

83 Key full-funtion Keyboard.$99.00 

100 WATT Power Supply.$110.00 

135 WATT Power Supply.$145.00 

Monochrome Graphic Card 

w/Printer Port .$210.00 

Color Graphic Card .$149.00 

FDD Controller Card.S99.00 

Parallel Printer Card.$59.00 

ASYNC & RS232 Port.$75.00 

320KB DS/DD Slimline Disk Drive $119.00 

IBM Parallel Cable 10’ .$19.95 

IBM Prototype Board (SUN-208) . $9.50 

MICROLOG Z-80B Co-Processor, 
Multi-funtion (Run CP/M80 Software, 

Require 64K RAM).$499.00 

Apparat EPROM Blaster.$129.00 

IBM Up-Grade Kit (4164) . . . $29.00/per kit 




Compatible 

Products 


16K RAM Card .$49.00 

SUN Z80 Card (w/o software).$55.00 

SUN 80 Column Card (w/Soft switch) $85.00 

Power Supply (5 Amp).$59.95 

Cooling Fan .$42.00 

Parallel Printer Card.$55.00 

Floppy Disk Controller.S47.00 

EPROM Programmer (2716,32,64). . $75.00 

Apple Disk Drive.$160.00 

APPARAT PROM Blaster.$119.00 

Apple Prototype Board (SUN-722) .... $5.95 
Above items are not compatible with Apple lie 


S-100 Products . 


64K Static Memory Board (6116) 

w/o RAM A & T.$155.00 

64K Static Memory Board (6116) 

w/RAM A & T .$295.00 

Uses 6116 CMOS RAMS, Vz Amp Max, 
w/64K (a 6MHz Extended Addressing. Bank 
Select 4-16K Blocks, 2716 EPROM can 
replace any 6116RAM, 8 Bit IEEE 696. 
UFDC-1 5V4 and 8 Floppy Disk Controller 

(BIOS available) A & T .$225.00 

Clock/Calendar A & T .$115.00 

Prototype Board (SUN-721) .$9.95 

Mother Board/Card Cages 

(6, 8 & 12 Slots) are available .... CALL 


j General Products 

SAM WOO HIGH RESOLUTION MONITOR 1 

Features: 


^22 MHz Bandwidth 


^Composite Video 


^Anti-glare Screen 


^Passes FCC & UL Approved 


^1000 Lines or 132 Charactors Across V 

12” AMBER orGREEN . 

$99.00 

TAXAN RGB-Ill Monitor . 

. $420.00 

12” Green TTL Monitor 


(For IBM, 20 MHz) . 

. $135.00 

SPECIAL SALE ITEMS 

★ 10MB Hard Disk Drive (Internal) 


w/Controller for IBM PC. 

. $749.00 

★ IBM Prototype Board (SUN-208) . 

. . . $9.50 

★ IBM PC Mouse. 

. $147.00 

★ Diskette DSDD 5Vi” . 

$16.00/10 

★ Koala Graphics Table w/Software 1 

for Apple . 

. . $89.00 

for IBM . 

. $105.00 

★ Quad Board II . 

. $249.00 

★ Quad 512 (64K) . 

. $259.00 

★ RAM 4164 (150ns) . 

. . . $3.55 

TTL 1C, ROM, RAM & CPU CHIPS, CONNEC- 1 

TORS & 1C SOCKETS ARE AVAILABLE. ! 


HIGH REL * SWITCHING POWER SUPPLIES * low cost 


SW40W 


SW70W 



SW138 


S 3 & S 4 



Rl & R 1A 



ITEM 

FOR 

-f-5V 

-5V 

+ 12V 

+ 12V -12V 

+24V 

+ 8V ± 16V 

W x D x H in. 

TERMINALS 

PRICE 

SW40W 

TERM. & 2 ALPS DRIVES 

2.5A 

- 

2/2.5A pk. 

3A 

- 

- 

6.3 x 3.9 x 1.9 

MOLEX 5051 

$ 54.95 

SW70W 

APPLE III s , IBM PC-1, II s 

7A 

3A 

2.5/3.5A pk. 

3A 

- 

- 

9.6 x 4 x 2.4 

MOLEX 126-PI 

64.95 

SW80W 

PC WITH SOFT DRIVES 

8A 

3A 

3/4A pk. 

,3A 

- 

- 

7 4 x 4.5 x 2.3 

MOLEX 2139 

74.95 

SW138 

IBM PC-XT S P/S RPLCMNT. 15A 

1.0A 

4/5A pk. 

1.0A 

- 

- 

9.5 x 5.6 x 4.6 

MOLEX, AMP. 

119.95 

SW150 

PC WITH HARD DRIVES 

12A 

3A 

4/5A pk. 

2.5A 5A 

- 

- 

10.4 x 5 x 2.5 

TERM. BLOCK 

129.95 

SPECS. OF ABOVE SWITCHERS: 117/220 VAC SELECTABLE, 

INPUT 90-132 VAC/180-275 VAC, EFFIC. 75% 

TYPICAL, LINE REGUL. 0.3%, LOAD 

REGUL. 1% ON +5V, 5% ON OTHER VOLTAGES, 6.2 OVP SETTING ON +5V, OVERLOAD & SHORT CIRCUIT PROTECT, LOW OUTPUT RIPPLE & 

NOISE, 1% MAX, 50,000 HRS. 

MTBF RELIABILITY, UL. FCC & VDE SAFETY & NOISE STANDARDS. 




s 3 

FOR S-100. 10 SLOTS 

5A 

1A 

★ 

- 

5/7A pk. 

12A 3 A 

10 x 6 x 5 

SOLDER POST 

$105.95 

S 4 

FOR S-100, 6 SLOTS 

4A 

1A 

★ 

- 

4/5A pk. 

8A 2.5A 

8.4 x 5 x 4.8 

SOLDER POST 

89.95 

Rl 

2 FLOPPY DRIVES 

3A 

5A 

★ 

- 

3/4A pk. 

- 

8 x 4 x 3.4 

SOLDER POST 

44.95 

Ria 

APPLE II PC" 

3A 

5A 

3/4A pk. 

5A 

- 

- 

8 x 4 x 3.4 

SOLDER POST 

46.95 

c 64 

COMPATIBLE TO COMMODORE C64 (OR C+4) fi POWER SUPPLY: +5V/1.7A. 9 VAC/1A & 117 VAC IN,POTTED & U/L. 


19.95 


ITEM 

PRIMARY 

SECOND. #1 

SECOND. #2 

SECOND. #3 

W x D x H in. 

PRICE 

T i 

110/120 VAC 

2x8 VAC/7A 

28 VAC, CT, 2-5A 

- 

3 3 4 x 3 5 /s x 3V 8 

$15.95 

T 2 

110/120 VAC 

2x8 VAC/12A 

28 VAC, CT, 3A 

- 

3% x 4% x 3Va 

21.95 

t 3 

110/120 VAC 

2x8 VAC/6A 

28 VAC. CT, 2A 

28 VAC, CT, 3A 

3% x 4% x 3Vs 

23.95 

t 4 

110/120 VAC 

16 VAC, CT, 4A 

28 VAC, CT, 1.5A 

28 VAC, CT. 3A 

3% x 3 5 /s x 3Vs 

17.95 

T 4-1 

110/120 VAC 

16 VAC. CT, 4A 

28 VAC, CT, 1.5A 

48 VAC, CT, 2A 

3% x 3 5 /s x 3Vs 

14.95 

Ts 

110/120 VAC 

16 VAC. CT, 3A 

28 VAC, CT, 2A 

- 

3 x 3 x 2V2 

11.95 



: + 24V CAN BE CHANGED TO + 12V BY FACTORY, PLEASE SPECIFY WHEN YOU ORDER. 

THE ABOVE 5 LINEAR P/S ARE WITH 3% LOAD REGUL., OVP ON +5V, FUSED: INPUT & OUTPUTS. 

POWER TRANSFORMERS: (with mounting bracket) ON SALE 

- . ._ ._ - _ _ DDirC 

SHIPPING: 

FOR EA. POWER SUPPLY: $6.00 IN CALIF.; 
$8.00 IN OTHER STATES; $18.00 IN CANADA. 
FOR EA. TRANSFORMER: $6.00 IN ALL 
STATES; $12.00 IN CANADA. CALIF. 
RESIDENTS ADD 6.5% SALES TAX. 

IBM PC/PC-XT", APPLE ll/lll* & COMMODORE C64/C + 4" ARE TRADEMARKS OF IBM CORP, APPLE COMPUTER INC. & COMMODORE BUSINESS MACHINES, RESPECTIVELY. 


MAILING ADDRESS: 
P.O. BOX 4296 
TORRANC c E, CA 90510 

TELEX: 182558 


SUNNY INTERNATIONAL 
~ IN BUSINESS SINCE 1975 
(213) 328-2425 MON-FRI 8:30-5:30 


SHIPPING ADDRESS: 
22129V2 S. VERMONT AVE. 
TORRANCE, CA 90502 


428 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 301 














































































































Inquiry 302 




SUNTRONSCS CO.,INC. 

12621 Crenshaw Blvd., Hawthorne, CA 90250 


1-800-421-5775 (Order Only) 
(213) 644-11 40 (CA. Order & Inf.) 
STORE HOURS : 

Mon.-Fri. 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. 

Sat. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. 


TERMS: VISA MASTER Card 
COD (Cash or Certified Check Re¬ 
quired). Check(Allow 2-3 WKS for 
Clearing) Shipping & H/C S3 00 for 3 
Lbs plus 50c for each add LB Calif 
residents add Calif Sales Tax S10 00 
Minimum Order 

IBM & Apple are registered trade 
marks of IBM & Apple 


NEW BRANCH STORE IN ORANGE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA : 17552 BEACH BLVD., #C. HUNTINGTON BEACH, CA 92647 (714) 842-1948 



XT Compatible 
Products 


FEATURES: 
lintel 8088 CPU 

lintel 8087 Math Co-Processor (Option) 
✓•Expandable on-board to 256K 
-128K RAM w/Parity 

✓ 8 IBM Compatible Expansion Slots 

✓ 4 Channel DMA 8237 
•✓8 Channel Interrupt 8259 

•✓Mother Board dimension same as IBM PC 

□ Mother Board W/128K RAM.$399.00 

C Computer Cabinet.$69.00 

C 83 Key full-funtion Keyboard.$99.00 

□ 100 WATT Power Supply.$110.00 

□ 135 WATT Power Supply.$145.00 

□ Monochrome Graphic Card 

w/Printer Port .$210.00 

□ Color Graphic Card .$149.00 

□ FDD Controller Card.$99.00 

□ Parallel Printer Card.$59.00 

C ASYNC & RS232 Port.$75.00 

C 320KB DS/DD Slimline Disk Drive $119.00 

IBM Parallel Cable 10’ .$19.95 

C IBM Prototype Board (SUN-208) . . . $9.50 

□ MICROLOG Z-80B Co-Processor, 

Multi-funtion (Run CP/M80 Software, 

Require 64K RAM).$499.00 

Apparat EPROM Blaster.$129.00 

C IBM Up-Grade Kit (4164)... $29.00/per kit 


^CipplG 


Compatible 

Products 


16K RAM Card .$49.00 

SUN Z80 Card (w/o software).$55.00 

SUN 80 Column Card (w/Soft switch) $85.00 

Power Supply (5 Amp).$59.95 

Cooling Fan .$42.00 

Parallel Printer Card.$55.00 

Floppy Disk Controller.$47.00 

EPROM Programmer (2716,32,64). . $75.00 

Apple Disk Drive.$160.00 

APPARAT PROM Blaster.$119.00 

Apple Prototype Board (SUN-722) .... $5.95 
Above items are not compatible with Apple lie 


S-100 Products 


64K Static Memory Board (6116) 

w/o RAM A & T.$155.00 

64K Static Memory Board (6116) 

w/RAM A & T .$295.00 

Uses 6116 CMOS RAMS, V 2 Amp Max, 
w/64K @ 6MHz Extended Addressing, Bank 
Select 4-16K Blocks, 2716 EPROM can 
replace any 6116RAM, 8 Bit IEEE 696. 
UFDC-1 5V4 and 8 Floppy Disk Controller 

(BIOS available) A & T .$225.00 

Clock/Calendar A & T.$115.00 

Prototype Board (SUN-721).$9.95 

Mother Board/Card Cages 

(6, 8 & 12 Slots) are available_CALL 


General Products 

; SAM WOO HIGH RESOLUTION MONITOR 1 

Features: 


•✓22 MHz Bandwidth 
•✓Composite Video 
•✓Anti-glare Screen 
•✓Passes FCC & UL Approved 


j! »✓ 1000 Lines or 132 Charactors Across 1 

12” AMBER or GREEN. 

$99.00 

TAXAN RGB-Ill Monitor. 

. $420.00 

j 12” Green TTL Monitor 


(For IBM, 20 MHz) . 

. $135.00 

SPECIAL SALE ITEMS 

★ 10MB Hard Disk Drive (Internal) 


w/Controller for IBM PC. 

. $749.00 

★ IBM Prototype Board (SUN-208). 

. . . $9.50 

★ IBM PC Mouse. 

. $147.00 

★ Diskette DSDD SVi”. 

$16.00/10 

| ★Koala Graphics Table w/Software | 

for Apple. 

. . $89.00 

for IBM . 

. $105.00 

★ Quad Board II . 

. $249.00 

★ Quad 512 (64K). 

. $259.00 

★ RAM 4164 (150ns). 

. . . $3.55 

1 TTL 1C, ROM, RAM & CPU CHIPS, CONNEC- 1 
TORS & 1C SOCKETS ARE AVAILABLE. 1 


HIGH REL * SWITCHING POWER SUPPLIES * low cost 


SW40W 


SW70W 


SW80W 


SW138 


SW150 


S3 & S4 




Rl & Ria 



ITEM 

FOR 

+ 5V 

—5 V 

-t- 12V 

- 1 - 12V 

- 12V 

+24V 

+8V ± 16V WxDxHin. 

TERMINALS 

PRICE 

SW40W 

TERM. & 2 ALPS DRIVES 

2.5A 

- 

2/2.5A pk. 

- 

,3A 

- 

63x3.9x1.9 

MOLEX 5051 

$ 54.95 

SW70W 

APPLE III®, IBM PC-1, II® 

7A 

3A 

2.5/3.5A pk. 

- 

3A 

- 

9.6 x 4 x 2.4 

MOLEX 126-PI 

64.95 

SW80W 

PC WITH SOFT DRIVES 

8A 

3A 

3/4A pk. 

- 

3A 

- 

7.4 x 4.5 x 2.3 

MOLEX 2139 

74.95 

SW138 

IBM PC-XT* P/S RPLCMNT. 

15A 

1.0A 

4/5A pk. 

- 

1.0A 

- 

9.5 x 5.6 x 4.6 

MOLEX, AMP. 

119.95 

SW150 

PC WITH HARD DRIVES 

12A 

3A 

4/5A pk. 

2.5A 

5A 

- 

10.4 x 5 x 2.5 

TERM. BLOCK 

129.95 


SPECS. OF ABOVE SWITCHERS: 117/220 VAC SELECTABLE, INPUT 90-132 VAC/180-275 VAC, EFFIC. 75% TYPICAL, LINE REGUL. 0.3%, LOAD 
REGUL. 1% ON +5V, 5% ON OTHER VOLTAGES. 6.2 OVP SETTING ON - 5V, OVERLOAD & SHORT CIRCUIT PROTECT. LOW OUTPUT RIPPLE & 
NOISE, 1% MAX, 50,000 HRS. MTBF RELIABILITY, UL, FCC & VDE SAFETY & NOISE STANDARDS. 


s 3 

FOR S-100, 10 SLOTS 

5A 

1A * 

- 

5/7A pk. 

12A 

3A 10x6x5 

SOLDER POST 

$105.95 

s 4 

FOR S-100, 6 SLOTS 

4A 

1A * 

- 

4/5A pk. 

8A 

2.5A 8.4 x 5 x 4.8 

SOLDER POST 

89.95 

Rl 

2 FLOPPY DRIVES 

3A 

5A * 

- 

3/4A pk. 

- 

8 x 4 x 3.4 

SOLDER POST 

44.95 

Ria 

APPLE II PC« 

3A 

.5A 3/4A pk. 

- 

5A 

- 

8 x 4 x 3.4 

SOLDER POST 

46.95 

c 64 

COMPATIBLE TO COMMODORE 

C64 (OR C+4)* POWER SUPPLY: +5V/1.7A, 9 VAC/1A & 117 VAC IN,POTTED & U/L. 


19.95 


ITEM 

PRIMARY 

SECOND. #1 

SECOND. #2 

SECOND. #3 

W x D x H in. 

PRICE 

Ti 

110/120 VAC 

2x8 VAC/7A 

28 VAC, CT, 2-5A 

- 

3% x 3 5 /s x 3Va 

$15.95 

t 2 

110/120 VAC 

2x8 VAC/12A 

28 VAC, CT, 3A 

- 

3% x 4% x 3Vs 

21.95 

t 3 

110/120 VAC 

2x8 VAC/6A 

28 VAC, CT, 2A 

28 VAC, CT, 3A 

3% x 4% x 3Va 

23.95 

T4 

110/120 VAC 

16 VAC, CT, 4A 

28 VAC, CT, 1.5A 

28 VAC, CT, 3A 

33/4 x 3 5 /a x 3Vs 

17.95 

T4-1 

110/120 VAC 

16 VAC, CT, 4A 

28 VAC, CT, 1.5A 

48 VAC, CT, 2A 

33/4 x 3 5 /s x 3Va 

14.95 

Ts 

110/120 VAC 

16 VAC, CT, 3A 

28 VAC, CT, 2A 

- 

3 x 3 x 2V 2 

11.95 



: +24V CAN BE CHANGED TO + 12V BY FACTORY, PLEASE SPECIFY WHEN YOU ORDER. 

THE ABOVE 5 LINEAR P/S ARE WITH 3% LOAD REGUL., OVP ON +5V, FUSED: INPUT & OUTPUTS. 

POWER TRANSFORMERS: (with mounting bracket) ON SALE 

* ~ * * - - — DDIPC 

SHIPPING: 

FOR EA. POWER SUPPLY: $6.00 IN CALIF.; 
$8.00 IN OTHER STATES; $18.00 IN CANADA. 
FOR EA. TRANSFORMER: $6.00 IN ALL 
STATES; $12.00 IN CANADA. CALIF. 
RESIDENTS ADD 6.5% SALES TAX. 

IBM PC/PC-XT* APPLE ll/lll® & COMMODORE C64/C + 4* ARE TRADEMARKS OF IBM CORP, APPLE COMPUTER INC. & COMMODORE BUSINESS MACHINES, RESPECTIVELY. 


MAILING ADDRESS: 
P.O. BOX 4296 
TORRANCE, CA 90510 


TELEX: 182558 


SUNNY INTERNATIONAL 
* IN BUSINESS SINCE 1975 
(213) 328-2425 MON-FRI 8:30-5:30 


SHIPPING ADDRESS: 
22129V2 S. VERMONT AVE. 
TORRANCE, CA 90502 


428 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 301 






































































WHAT’S NEW 


Equation Processor 


E quate is an equation 
processor for the IBM 
PC and compatibles using 
DOS 1.1 through 2.1. 

It lets you enter up to 799 
equations anywhere on 
screen in standard algebraic 
notation. A full-screen text 
editor facilitates equation 
and explanatory-text entry 
and an interactive Constants 
Window gives you more 
than 400 physical constants 
and measurement conver¬ 
sions to insert into equa¬ 
tions. Equations or other 
constants can be added to 
the window. 

Equate evaluates your 
equations, prompts for 
undefined variables, and 
produces 16-bit (double¬ 
precision) results at the 
press of a function key. A 
forms feature helps you 
devise application work¬ 
sheets that prompt for data 
or arrange results into 
tables. Data cells can be 
sited at any spot on screen; 
rows or columns are not 
mandatory. 

Equations, results, and 
tables can be stored as 
worksheets. Worksheets may 
be printed or transferred to 
a word processor that ac¬ 
cepts ASCII files. 

The General Worksheet 
Series Disk 1 comes with 
Equate. It provides work¬ 
sheets for solving simulta¬ 
neous equations and for 
calculating standard devia¬ 
tion, variance, and the area 
and moments of inertia for 
principal shapes. 

Equate comes with an 
evaluation version that's 
good for 30 uses. The 
master disk and related 
materials can be returned to 
the manufacturer within 30 
days for a full refund. 

Equate is $195. Contact Ban¬ 
yan Systems Corp.. 5632 
East Third St., Tlicson, AZ 
85711, (602) 745-8086. 

Inquiry 640 


SOFTWARE • IBM PC 

Soft Winchester: Inexpensive, Alternative Hard Disk 


he BYSO Soft Win¬ 
chester program from 
Levien Instrument Company 
stores your most frequently 
used data in RAM so that 
you can access it quickly. 
The manufacturer says that 
with Soft Winchester such 
programs as WordStar and 
dBASE II will load or sort 
hundreds of times faster 
than from a floppy. 


Soft Winchester lets you 
use 1440K bytes of data. If 
you have data that cannot 
be accessed from RAM or 
disk, it prompts you for the 
disk with the data. It auto¬ 
matically backs up your data 
to disk. and. once loaded, 
its operation is transparent. 
A simple key combination 
lets you use new 1440K-byte 
sets of data. 


The BYSO Soft Winchester 
runs on 128K-byte IBM Per¬ 
sonal Computers, including 
the PCjr, and true IBM com¬ 
patibles. A monochrome or 
graphics adapter is required. 
It costs $60. For more infor¬ 
mation. contact Levien In¬ 
strument Co., POB 31. 
McDowell. VA 24458, (703) 
396-3345. 

Inquiry 641. 



FORTRAN and UNIX for AT 


U nisource Software Cor¬ 
poration has introduced 
a UNIX-based FORTRAN-77 
compiler for the IBM PC XT 
and PC AT. In a related 
development, the Massa¬ 
chusetts-based publisher 
and distributor of UNIX soft¬ 
ware also announced an im¬ 
plementation of UNIX for 
the IBM PC AT. 


The FORTRAN compiler 
runs under VENIX on such 
machines as the IBMs, AT&T 
6300, Compaq Plus. Eagle 
Uirbo. MAD 1. and DEC Pro¬ 
fessional 3 50. It costs $395. 

Its UNIX operating system, 
claims Unisource, is the first 
licensed implementation of 
AT&T UNIX for the the IBM 
PC AT. This version is 


delivered with a System V 
UNIX license. A full im¬ 
plementation for one or two 
users retails for $875. For 
up to eight users, it's $1075. 

For further information, 
contact Unisource Software 
Corp., 71 Bent St.. Cam¬ 
bridge, MA 02141. (617) 
491-1264. 

Inquiry 642. 


IBM Fits the Curves 


curve-fitting program 
for the IBM PC. Curve 
Fitter-PC is available directly 
from Interactive Microware. 

Curve Fitter-PC fits curves 
to experimental or business 
data. Curve types include 
polynomial, cubic spline, or 
Stineman interpolation 
methods. If you want, least- 


squares fitting can produce 
the standard curve using a 
polynomial (degree 1 to 6). 
geometric, or exponential 
least-squares method. Any 
or all fitting models can be 
used to select the best fit. 

Some statistical measures 
of the accuracy of the fitted 
curve provided are standard 


error of estimates and per¬ 
cent deviation for calculated 
versus observed values. 

Features include curve¬ 
fitting demonstrations, high- 
resolution (i.e., 320 by 200) 
graphics, choice of plotting 
symbols on the same graph 
for distinguishing multiple 
superimposed curves, the 
ability to enter data as x.y 
pairs or as values at fixed 
intervals, and four text-label 
locations. Working files can 
be saved and transferred to 
programs that accept ASCII 
data. 

Minimum requirements are 
128K bytes of RAM. color 
graphics board, a disk drive, 
and PC-DOS 1.1, 2.0, or 2.1. 
The manual alone is $15; 
the complete package is 
$95. Contact Interactive 
Microware Inc., POB 139. 
State College, PA 
16804-0139, (814) 238-8294. 
Inquiry 643. 


WHERE DO NEW PRODUCT ITEMS COME FROM? 

The new products listed in this section of BYTE are chosen 
from the thousands of press releases, letters, and telephone 
calls we receive each month from manufacturers, distributors, 
designers, and readers. The basic criteria for selection for 
publication are: (a) does a product match our readers' in¬ 
terests? and (b) is it new or is it simply a reintroduction of 
an old item? Because of the volume of submissions we must 
sort through every month, the items we publish are based 
on vendors' statements and are not individually verified. If 
you want your product to be considered for publication (at 
no charge), send full information about it, including its price 
and an address and telephone number where a reader can 
get further information, to New Products Editor, BYTE, POB 
372, Hancock. NH 03449. 



FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 427 










GUARANTEED 
LG’s. SHIPPED 
IMMEDIATELY 


The Computer Parts Merchant is a leading nationwide 
supplier of wholesale I.C.’s. We have just about every I.C. 
made in stock today. Plus, we offer these special services: 


Guaranteed parts—every part 
guaranteed for 60 days—and pre¬ 
tested before shipment. 

Guaranteed fast—same day- 
shipping. 

Guaranteed low prices. 

Guaranteed satisfaction or pur¬ 
chase price cheerfully refunded. 

How to order. 

Call toll free. We accept Visa, 
Mastercard or American Express. 
Or we can ship UPS C.O.D. 
National 800-235-4900 
California 800-238-4900 
Local Orange County 
(714)474-1033. 


jgfr... 

* 

* Mu, 
% 



CPM 

The Computer 
Parts Merchant, Inc. 


Visit our retail store: 

The Computer Parts Merchant, Inc. 
17777 Main Street, Suite D 
Irvine, CA 92714 

Terms: minimum order $10. For 
shipping and handling, include 
$2.50 UPS Ground, or $3.50 for 
UPS Air. California residents 
must include 6% sales tax. All 
prices are subject to change with¬ 
out notice. We are not responsible 
for typographical errors. All mer¬ 
chandise subject to prior sale. 

Search service. If we don’t have 
the I.C. you need in stock, we can 
find it for you. (There is a $25 min- 
imum charge for I.C.’s found 
through a search.) 

A few samples from our million 
pail inventory: 


A few samples from our million 74SXX 


part inventory: 




74S00 

74S02 

S 45 

49 

74S151 

74S153 

S 97 
97 







74S04 

49 

74S157 

97 







74S08 

49 

74S161 

1 87 



74LSXX 



74510 

74511 

45 

49 

74S169 

74S174 

3 99 
99 

74LS00 

S 38 

74LS83 

S 87 

74LS170 

SI 49 

74S20 

49 

74S181 

4 39 

74LS02 

38 

74LS86 

46 

74LS191 

99 

74S22 

45 

74S194 

1 99 

74LS04 

40 

74LS91 

75 

74LS221 

1 30 

74S30 

35 

74S197 

1 79 

74LS08 

40 

74LS93 

66 

74LS240 

1 60 

74S32 

59 

74S240 

2 20 

74LS10 

40 

74LS107 

46 

74LS241 

1 30 

74S37 

89 

74S241 

2 40 

74LS11 

40 

74LS109 

46 

74LS242 

1 30 

74S38 

99 

74S244 

2 20 

74LS12 

36 

74LS112 

50 

74LS243 

1 30 

74S74 

89 

74S251 

95 

74LS14 

76 

74LS122 

53 

74LS244 

1 49 

74S86 

95 

74S253 

95 

74LS20 

38 

74LS124 

2 90 

74LS245 

1 49 

74S112 

1 19 

74S257 

95 

74LS21 

38 

74LS132 

91 

74LS251 

75 

74S113 

1 19 

74S260 

79 

74LS30 

38 

74LS137 

99 

74LS257 

75 

74S124 

299 

74S273 

2 45 

74LS32 

50 

74LS138 

87 

74LS258 

75 

74S132 

1 59 

74S287 

229 

74LS37 

40 

74LS147 

275 

74LS266 

79 

74S138 

97 

74S373 

3 39 

74LS38 

40 

74LS151 

66 

74LS273 

1 69 

74S139 

97 

74S374 

3 39 

74LS40 

38 

74LS153 

69 

74LS373 

1 49 

74S140 

77 

74S570 

3 50 

74LS42 

66 

74LS157 

65 

74LS374 

1 49 


Call for others 


74LS51 

36 

74LS158 

65 

74LS377 

1 49 





74LS54 

38 

74LS161 

75 

74LS640 

3 49 





74LS63 

1 50 

74LS166 

1 95 

74LS669 

1 99 

DYNAMIC RAMS 


74LS74 

55 

74LS169 

1.75 

74LS670 

299 

TMS4027 

S 1 99 

4116 

$1 49 



Partial List 



MM5280 

1 95 

2118 

4 95 







TMS4060 

1.95 

4164 

5 95 








5, 

8,12 AND 15 VOLT 


UPD411 
MK4108 

1 95 

1 95 

TMS4416 

41256 

9 95 
Call 


VOLTAGE REGULATORS 


Call for more 


Call 1 or Prices 


LINEAR DEVICES 


STATIC 


CMOS 


LM301 

S 47 

NE570 

S3 95 

RAMS 

4001 

S 35 

74C00 

S 49 

LM307 

57 

LM709 

59 

2101 

2114 

2147 

TMS4044 

TMM2016 

HM6116 

TMS4016 

HM6264 

SI 95 

1 50 

4 95 

4 59 

4 59 

4 75 
695 

39 95 

4002 

35 

74C02 

47 

LM309H 

1.95 

LM723 

59 

4008 

95 

74C04 

47 

LM312 

1.75 

LM741 

49 

4010 

57 

74C08 

47 

LM318 

1 49 

LM747 

69 

4011 

37 

74C10 

47 

LM324 

79 

LM748 

59 

4012 

37 

74C20 

49 

LM350 

4 95 

LM1458 

59 

4020 

87 

74C30 

49 

LM380 

89 

LM2900 

85 

4021 

95 

74C73 

87 

LM393 

1 29 

LM3900 

79 

4022 

87 

74C74 

79 

NE555 

57 

MC4024 

3 95 

4030 

57 

74C86 

59 

NE556 

77 

MC4044 

4 50 

Others on shelf 

4034 

1 95 

74C90 

1 19 







4040 

97 

74C93 

1 75 


Call for others 










4041 

97 

74C151 

2 25 







4050 

47 

74C157 

1 75 



7AYY 



4069 

35 

74C161 

1 79 

7400 






4071 

35 

74C173 

79 

S 35 

7451 

S 39 

74160 

89 

4082 

35 

74C174 

1 19 

7401 

35 

7473 

54 

74161 

89 

4093 

67 

74C192 

1 49 

7402 

39 

7474 

69 

74163 

89 

4502 

95 

74C193 

1 49 

7404 

39 

7489 

3 40 

74164 

99 

4512 

97 

74C373 

2 45 

7406 

89 

7498 

47 

74166 

1 50 

4522 

1 25 

74C374 

2 45 

7407 

89 

7492 

69 

74174 

99 

4532 

1 95 

74C906 

95 

7408 

41 

74107 

39 

74181 

2 39 

4556 

99 

74C912 

8 95 

7410 

35 

74109 

59 

74191 

1 15 

4585 

99 

74C921 

15 95 

7411 

39 

74123 

69 

74193 

99 


7420 

35 

74125 

69 

74194 

99 


iviany more pan 


7421 

49 

74132 

59 

74221 

1 35 





7427 

45 

74147 

1 75 

74273 

1 95 


MEMORY EPROMS 


7430 

7432 

7438 

35 

35 

49 

74151 

74153 

74154 

79 

79 

1 25 

74366 

74367 
74393 

99 

99 

1 35 

2708 

2716 

2732 

S3 95 

3 95 

2764 

27128 

S6 95 
34 95 

7442 

59 

74157 

79 



4 95 





Others on shelf 




More available 



Inquiry 68 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 431 










Inquiry 78 


The latest CCT implementation of the new 
generation Intel 16-Bit Processor technology. 
This means extreme speed, unequaled power, 
and the ultimate in reliability, and of course, the 
innovators at CCT behind it. 


This series in the CCT line exploits the speed and power of the Intel 80286 and Zilog Z-80H (8MHz), on the 286Z CPU 
board. This combination, along with CompuPro DMA controllers and I/O boards, yields a dramatic improvement in system 
throughput speeds, from basic CP/M operation, up to large powerful multi-user/multi-tasking machines. The CCT-4 
represents the most advanced hardware presently available in a microcomputer to run the thousands of CP/M type 
software programs on the market, and with CONCURRENT DOS 8-16 and the CompuPro PC Graphics board (when 
available), all software written for the IBM PC machines. This series is for the serious business/scientific user. 

CCT-4A State-of-the-art power in it’s basic form. Consists of CCT-286Z CPU board and CCT-M256 (256K), along with Com¬ 
puPro: Enclosure 2 Desk (21 slot MF), Disk 1A, System Support 1. Interfacer 4. the CCT-2.4 floppy drive system, and 
CP/M 80 and CP/M 86, and with Surgefree SF-200 surge suppressor system. $5,995.00 

CCT-4B Single-user/hard disk power. As the 4A, except priced without the CCT-2.4, to add in your choice of CCT hard/floppy 

combination drive subsystem, at the published pricing. . $4,895.00 

(Example: CCT-4B Mainframe with CCT-10/1 = $7,244.00) p,us cost of selected drive subsystem 



CCT-4C Multi-user/hard disk power. As the 4B, with the CCT-M512 (512K static RAM board) instead of M256; Interfacer 3 in¬ 
stead of Interfacer 4; Surgefree SF-400 instead of SF-200, plus MP/M 8-16 operating system. (6 user system) $6,695.00 
(Example: CCT-4C Mainframe with CCT-40/1 = $10,044.00) Plus cost of selected drive subsystem 

CCT BONUS ON 4C: FREE CONCURRENT DOS UPDATE! 

The above systems include all necessary cabling, assembly, testing, minimum 20 hour burn-in, 

^ ^ and the CCT unconditional 12 month direct warranty. 

CCT-M512 CCT introduces it’s 512K static RAM board. IEEE Standard 12MHz. 512K in one slot! Introductory Price: $2,249 
CCT-M256 256K version of M512 upgradeable to full 512K. Perfect 256K RAM board for any CompuPro system $1,149 




CUSTOM COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY / BOX 4160 / SED0NA, ARIZONA 86340 

TOLL FREE ORDERING: 800-222-8686 / For technical support / service: 602-282-6299 



IBM PC. 256 K, One Half Height 320 K Disk Drive DS/DD, 
Persyst Color Card. Taxan Green Monitor, DOS 2.1 
PLUS a 10MB Hard Disk Sub System all for: 

$2690.00 

IBM PC, 256 K, Two Half Height Drives DS/DD, Persyst 
Color Card, Taxan Green Monitor, DOS 2.1, 130 Watt 
Power Suply PLUS a 10MB Hard Disk Sub System all for: 

$2980.00 

IBM PC, 256 K, Two Half Height Drives DS/DD, Persyst 
Color Card. Taxan Green Monitor. DOS 2.1, 130 Watt 
Power Supply, 10MB Hard Disk Sub System, PLUS 
10MB Tape Back Up System all for: 

$3579.00 

IBM PC, 256 K, Two Half Height Drives DS/DD, Persyst 
Color Card, Taxan Green Monitor. DOS 2.1, 130 Watt 
Power Supply, 20MB Hard Disk Sub System all for: 

$3380.00 

IBM PC, 256 K, Two Half Height Drives DS/DD, Persyst 
Color Card, Taxan Green Monitor, DOS 2.1, 130 Watt 
Power Supply, 20MB Hard Disk Sub System PLUS 10MB 
Tape Back Up System all for: 

$3979.00 

(We configure and test the system for you at no extra 
cost.) 


SOMEBODY Has TO 


MONITORS 

AMDFK 300 

$135 00 

PGR HX-1? 

_ $475 00 

PGS MAX-1? 

$190.00 

PGR SR-12 

$625.00 

TAXAN GREEN COMPOSITE 

$125.00 

TAXAN AMRFR CCMPCSITF 

$135 00 

TAXAN GRFFN W/TTl PI IIS 

$149 00 

TAXAN AMBER W/TTL PLUS 

$159.00 

IBM MONOCHROME DISPLAY 

$260.00 

IBM COLOR DISPLAY 

$590.00 


PRINTERS 

EPSON FX 80 

$425.00 

EPSON FX 100 

$625.00 

EPSON RX 80 

$245.00 

EPSON RX 80FT 

$295.00 

OKIDATA 82A 

$299.00 

OKIDATA 83A 

$569 00 

OKIDATA 92P 

$399 00 

OKIDATA 93P 

$625.00 

OKIDATA 84P 

$759.00 

OKIDATA 2410P 

$1959.00 

TOSHIBA P1351 

$1295.00 

NFC SPINWRITFR 3660 

$1595.00 

NEC PINWRITER 80 COL 

$699.00 

NFC PINWRITER 136 COl 

$899.00 

BROTHER HR-25 

$699 00 

RROTHFR HR-36 

$925 on 

(Accessories on NEC & OKIDATA printers available) 

DRIVES 

TANDON TM-100-2 

$179.00 

SLIMLINE - TOSHIBA 

$155.00 

SLIMLINE - TEAC 55B 

$155 00 


MULTIFUNCTION BOARDS 


AST l/O+l SER & 1 PAR _$179.00 

AST SIX PACK 64K, 1 SER & 1 PAR _ $269.00 

QUADBOARD 64K_$269.00 

IBM COLOR GRAPHIC ADAPTER_$225.00 


Have The Lowest Prices! 

IBM MONO PRINTER ADAPTER _$230.00 


PERSYST COLOR ADAPTER 

$190.00 

PERSYST MONO PRINTER ADAPTER 

$21000 

HERCULES GRAPHIC ADAPTER 

$349 00 

HPRCIJI FS COl OR CARD 

$210.00 

STB GRAPHIX PLUS II 

$37500 


MODEMS 

HAYES SMART MODEM 1200 

$469.00 

HAYES SMART MODEM 300 

$209.00 

HAYES 1200B PLUG IN CARD 

$429.00 

QUBIE PC 212A/1200 INT 

$275.00 

OUBIE PC 212E/1200 EXT 

$29900 


HARD DISKS 

10MB SUB SYSTEM INT 

$850.00 

10MB SUB SYSTEM EXT 

$1025.00 

10MB TAPE RACK LJP 

$599 00 


GENERAL 

CONTROI DATA DISKETTES 

$25.00/box 

KEYTRONIC KR5161 

$189 00 

PARALLEL CABLES 

$25.00 

64K RAM UPGRADE KIT 

$50.00 

128K RAM UPGRADE KIT (For AT) 

$199.00 

IBM PC POWER SUPPLY (Original) 

63.5 Watts 

$89.00 


IBM KEYBOARD FOR PC (Original) _$109.00 



Tustin, California 92680 

(Prices & availability subject to change without notice— 
IBM is a registered trademark of IBM Corporation.) 


432 BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 216 






















































































TOLL-FREE 

ORDERING: 

800 - 222-8686 

FOR TECHNICAL SUPPORT/ 
SERVICE / IN ARIZONA: 
602-282-6299 



'CUSTOM COMPUTER 
TECHNOLOGY 


1 CCT PLAZA — P.O. BOX 4160 — SEDONA, ARIZONA 86340 


Purchase your Hardware and Software directly from an OEM / Systems Integrator. Take advantage of our buying power! We stock a 
full line of Board Level Components. Software and Peripherals. Call for your needs. We ll give you the Lowest Prices, and the Technical 
Support and Know-How we are quickly becoming well-known for. Satisfied Customers Nationwide. The Nation’s Custom Systems House 
for Business. Education and Science. Call for a system quote. CCT implements tomorrow’s technology today! 


• FOREMOST QUALITY • ADVANCED SUPPORT • REASONABLE COST • 




80286 NOW! 

□ CCT-286Z is our model designation 
for the MI-286 dual processor board 
from Macrotech. It features the super 
high speed combination of Z-80H and 
80286, with provision for the 80287 
math chip. Directly replaces 8085/88 
and 8086 CPUs running CP/M, MP/M 
Concurrent DOS, and MS-DOS, at 
throughput increases of 3X to 5X! 

SPECIAL PRICE $1099 
80287 Optio n - Installed - $395 

SEE THE CCT-4 SERIES 
USING THIS BOARD 
DETAILED ON THE FACING PAGE 


• 8” CP/M SOFTWARE SPECIALS • 

dBASE II-Latest Version 2.4. $349 

Supercalc 86 $99 Supercalc 2 $259 

Wordstar $279 Pro-Pak $379 
DRICBASIC Compiler 80 $389 ]86 $449 

DRI Pascal Compiler 80 $279 86 $449 

DRIGSX-86 $79 Assembler Tools/RMAC $179 
Microsoft BASIC $299 iCompiler $339 
Supersoft FORTRAN IV $339 C Comp $399 

• TOP SELLING PERIPHERALS • 

Wyse Terminals -DROPPED- 

LIBERTY TERMINALS 
• Superior Reliability • 

100-12” GREEN-25 X 80 .$399 

110-14” GREEN-80/132 Column $499 
200-14” GREEN-80/132 Super Deluxe $569 
220-14” GREEN-DEC Compatible $699 
CCT RECOMMENDS— 

AMBER Screen Options $20 

OKI DATA PRINTERS • Top Quality 

82 - 80 Col S329 83 -132 Col $619 
92 - 80 Col $429 93 132 Col S659 

84 132 Col/200cps—Top of the Line $799 
For Serial Interfaces — Add $100 

DIABLO — Letter Quality Series 
Model 620 $969 Model 630 $1799 


INDUSTRIAL GRADE PPT fllQlf HOIl/E CVQTEIWIQ R0LLS R0YCES0F 
SUPERIOR QUALITY UU I Ulvll UR I V L OIOI LlflW THE INDUSTRY 

S-lOO HARD DISK SUBSYSTEMS 

Professionally engineered ST-506 type systems for the business market S-lOO Computer user. In¬ 
cludes industry top quality drives, CompuPro Disk 3 DMA controller, all cabling, A&T, formatted, 
burned-in. Provisions for up to two hard disks in each system. We include operating system update. 
CP/M 80, CP/M 86, CP/M 8-16, MP/M 8-16, CP/M 68K. (/I Systems are CCT innovated hard/floppy 
combinations, with Mitsubishi DSDD 8” drive.) 12 month warranty. 

CCT-10(11 + MEG) .$1799 CCT-IO/1 .$2349 

CCT-20 (22 + MEG) .$2319 CCT-20/1 .$2869 

CCT-40 (36 + MEG) .$2799 CCT-40/1 .$3349 

CCT-60 (58 + MEG) (New).$3999 CCT-60/1 .$4549 

CCT-90 (87 +MEG) (New).$5209 CCT-90/1 .$5759 

CCT-125 (123 + MEG) (New).$6399 CCT-125/1 .$6949 

Drive capacities shown are after formatting! We are working on tape cartridge back-up units. 


CCT-2.4 • Dual 8” DSDD FL0PPY SYSTEMS CCT . 5 . 5 y 4 ” DSDD 

Mitusbishi 2.4 Megabyte in Extra Heavy horizontal enclosure, IBM Compatible Tandon 320K. Extra Heavy Cabinet 

removeable filter air system, all cabling. A&T. Burned in. The accommodates two drives, hard or floppy. All cabling, A&T, 

fastest system available: $1229 Bumed-in. Perfect for our MS-DOS Package . $399 


★ SUPER PRICES ★ COMPUPRO COMPONENTS ★ INSTOCK ★ 

CCT-2 - $6799 • CCT-3-$6699 • Disk lAw/CP/M-$619 • CPU 8086/87 - $819 • M-Drive/H - $1099 
CPU 8085/88 $349 • CPU 8086 - $559/1OMhz - $599 • CPU 68K - $519/10Mhz - $639 

CPU-Z - $249 • Disk 1A - $519 • Disk 3-$499 • RAM 23/64K- $309/128K- $599 • RAM 21 (128K) - $749 

* RAM 16 CLOSE-OUT SPECIAL $249 ★ 

RAM 22 (256K) - $1179 • Interfacer 3 $499 • Interfacer 4 - $349 • System Support 1 - $329 

Enclosure 2 Desk-$649/Rack -$699 • CP/M 80 (CCTHMX) - $125 • CP/M86(CCTTMX)-$175 

CP/M 8-16 (CCTTMX)-$199 • MP/M 8-16 (CCTSX) - $499 • CP/M68K(CCTCX) -$279 

16 Bit Upgrade Kit: CP/M 86, RAM 16, System Support 1, Cable $709 CP/M 8-16 - Kit - $733 


Operating System Updates/Remakes - $30 

• FREE CONCURRENT DOS 8-16 UPGRADE (WHEN AVAILABLE) WITH PURCHASE OF MP/M 8-16 • 

CCT-1 - ENTRY LEVEL S-100 BUSINESS SYSTEM 

• Enclosure 2-Desk-20 Slot Mainframe • • CCT-2.4-Dual 8” Mitsubishi 

• CPU 8085/88 - 6Mhz 8085/8Mhz 8088 • DSDD Drive System - 2.4 Megabytes • SPECIAL PRICE 

• Disk 1A - DMA Floppy Disk Controller • • CP/M 80 - 2.2 HMX - CCT Modified • 

• RAM 16 - 64K Static RAM - 12Mhz • • All Cabling, Complete CCT Assembly, 

• Interfacer 4 - 3 Serial/2 Parallel I/O • Testing, and Minimum 20 Hour Burn-in • 

RUNS ALL STANDARD 8” CP/M SOFTWARE - INCLUDES OUR EXCLUSIVE 12 MONTH DIRECT WARRANTY 



Prices & availability subject to change All products new. and carry full manufacturer’s warranties. Call for catalog. Free technical help to anyone. All products we sell are CCT individually 
tested and set up for your system - Plug-In & Go! Arizona residents add sales tax CCT Trademark—Custom Computer Technology: MS-DOS Trademark—Microsoft: IBM - Trademark 
— International Business Machines; CompuPro" Trademark — W.J. Godbout. CP/M MP/M Trademarks — Digital Research 


Inquiry 79 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 433 

















































icro 

products 

nternational 

714/898-0840 


r+ A? & cf 




Sweetheart Specials 

r f*y New Hayes SmartModem Compatible! tea 

F naJly a price breakthrough on a Haves ccmpat Die external 300 1200 • Runs tne DODuiar 

baud modem The pnce is without Hayes comnjr cations software 

'briver software out if you neeo t ado S25.CC f or direct RJ-i 1 connection 

Cal tor, ' • Manual & power supply included for this 

r Loo*. n tns spot every mo r " oon nn# 

sure to eaten your interest _ 700-8100-00 $229.00 


v . . N . IBM PC-XT SELECTRIC KEYBOARDS 

^ ▼ O O - | j? .% i f 

>5r ^ • jP V* x 

»Vv® 6 V<r ' 


> you nave oeen waning 0 
• you II love't' • Sngie *e> r ese? 

• Separate numer c -e.oao 
1 Separate Arrow Keypad 


TO 


o' & r (y _5b\ 

Sj O .&■ .Vy 


* & A* 




KEY-105 i-OO Selectnc 
KEY-1050-00 Standard 


SI 29.00 
89.00* 




IBM STYLE MOTHERBOARDS 

9B Two IBM-style Motherboards to 
aittan ; choose from 5-slot and 8-slot 
Both expandable to 256K 
5-slot has two serial slots and 
one parallel 



BOA-6000-00 5-Slot 


$395.00 


BOA-6058-00 8-Slot 





ADD ON POWER SUPPLY 

Power Supply with Fan and Powe' 
Filter uses 140 watts rirs Hard 
f * ^ Disk & Tape Bacx Up 



IBM Replacement type for Hard Disk 

^ New High Velocity Fan! 

New Low Price! 

POW-1040-00 


POWER BACK-UP 

Protect your Data with Datasnield ‘ in case of a Power failure Datashield * is a battery operated 

self-containea Power Generator which instantly supplies even _ 

uninterrupted AC Power to a Microprocessor m the event of a Power 
Drop or Outage In addition provides Surge Protection which filters • 

and eliminates voltage spikes (surges) above 140 VAC * 

PC-200 200 wans POW-2000-00 $299.00 * B | 

PC-300 300 watts POW-2050-00 $399.00* 



Do it Yourself! 


We think of this System as a "Do it Yourself System Start by choosing 
5 or 8 Slots. Some of the standard Features. • 64K RAM expandable 
to 256K • 4 DMA Channels • Runs MS-DOS™ and CP M-86™ 
(software not included) • Multifunction Keyboard & Cable 
• Hard Disk Ready Power Supply • And MORE' 

SYS-8000 00 Only $525.00* 


IBM type Case only 
5 Slot 
8 Slot 


CAB-3060-00 S65.00* 
CAB-3075-00 $65.00* 


This is OUR Junior! 

Use this Dnveless workstation for low-cost Networking 
Features: • 4-slot IBM™ compatible Motherboard 
• 128K Standard Memory • 8088 8087 Math Co-pro¬ 
cessor • Optional Floppy Drive with Controllers 
SYS-8100-00 $475.00* 

Full System w Keyboard. Mono Monitor Video Display 
Card 128KRAM 1 Drive SYS-8725-0G $895.00* 


NEW 

IBM “AT” 
1.2M Floppy 
In Stock - For 
your XPC! 
Can Read 
3.0 or 2.1 
DOS 

Formats! 


*OEM 
Qty 12 + 


*1245**1245* *1245* 
Complete yqa v/n _ 
System! by XOR 

10 Meg H.D. 


Add-On H.D. & Tape 



mi- 




Complete System' 

s 1895 00 * 

20 Meg Color 

Complete System' 

$2375°°* 

40 Meg w/Tape 

Complete System 1 

s 2845 00 * 

Software 

• XWORD 

• XBASIC 

• XBASE 
XCALC 
XCOM 


10 Meg $1295* 
20 Meg $1495* 
40 Meg $1995* 


10 Megabyte Irwin on the 

top, your choice of Hard Disk 
on the bottom Super ap¬ 
pearance! Requires one slot 
in your PC forSASI interface 
and an extension connector 
on the floppy card Every¬ 
thing else is supplied by us 
65 Meg $2895* 
105 Meg $3695* 
140 Meg $4595* 


Add-On Hard Disk 

Two ways to go The internal system is cheaper Decause it does 
not need a P S & Chassis The same P S & Chassis can oe us¬ 
ed for a 10 Meg Tape Back-up on your XT! 


10 Megabyte 

*795,nt/*995ext 

20 Megabyte 
*1095.nt/*1295ext 
40 Megabyte 
*1 595 int/*1 795 ext 


65 Megabyte 
*2495 
105 Megabyte 
*3295 
140 Megabyte 
*4195 


// 


n 

lb * 




'<■ ’ 


Check These Standard Features: 

• Full-Size. Feathe r -Touch. Capacitance Keyboard with 10 Function Keys and Calculator-Type Numeric Keypad • 

• Comes Standard with Rjraliel and Serial I/O • Game Port • 2-Slimlme 5 V DS/DD 48 TPi 360K Drives • 

• 8 IBM compatibleexpansion slots • Real Time Clock • Color Video Card • 

• 256K parity checked RAM on Motherboard • 808816-bit CPU • 4 DMA & 3 Timer channels • 

• Up to 32K of EPROM (full 8K supplied) • Supports PC-DOS - MS-DOS - CP M-86 • 

• Power Supply is Hard-Disk-Ready, no • High resolution 12' Monitor with Green 
need to add-on additional power Screen ■ 18 MHz bandwidth 


Add-On 10 Meg Tape 



If your IBM-XT needs a littt< 
help m the Back-up category 
you wont be able to beat the 
price 1 Cables software ant 
everything 1 


SUB-8300-00 * 


$495.00’ 


Not enough room here - Call for Catalog 



★ ★ 


★ ★ 


February Dealer Honors 

.Culbertson 
& Assoc. 

Dick Culbertson says. 7 
I have been writing application 
t programs with dBase II since 
* it’s introduction. I recommend 
Micro Product's XPC 
—a Systems for their reliability and 
M K1 their application programs 

U Among these is a very exten¬ 
sive Chiropractic Billing System, a Point-of-Sale Inven¬ 
tory Program for Video Tape Rental Stores, a Vending 
Machine Route Service Collection System and an Air¬ 
port Flight School record Keeping System. " 

Dick buys Basic Systems and then customizes them 
with his own components to satisfy the needs of his 
customers. To date he has over 27 Micro Computer 
Systems in service and working satisfactorily. 

* 14611 Leahy Ave ★ Bellflower CA ★ 213 / 866-8608 ★ 


The following are registered TrademarKs and their Companies MSDOS PC-DOS MicroSoh dBase 
II • Ashton-Tale CP M-86 Digital Research Inc IBM IBM-PC IBM-PC XT international Business 
Machines 


SUPER 12 PAK MULTI-FUNCTION 

This one is loaded' Features: Real-Time Chronograph Calendar with Battery 
Back-up. Parallel Port RS232-C Serial Port * 64K to 256K of Parity-checked 
Memory PrintSpool and RAM Disk Software 

Supplied with OK of Memory BOA-6400-00 $179.00 

Optional Serial Kit w cable 
KIT-8450-00 $ 25.00 

* Additional 64K Memory Chips 
:C-7801-00-:9. S 29.95 


INTERNATIONAL ORDERS 

Micro Products is ready to serve your needs m several countries Each Office 
has Sales Literature Local Pricing Inventory and Technical Service available to 
support your needs There are no problems with U S Export Forms 


HEAD OFFICE 
Darryl R. Green 

15392 Assemoly Lane Unit A 
Huntington Beacn CA 92649 
Phone 714 898-0840 
Telex 887841 XORDATAhTBh 

ZURICH OFFICE 

Cynthia Clark 

Eidmahstrasse 36 

CH 8032 Zuncn 

Switzerland 

Phone 1-69 3633 

Telex 816058 HKIN 

AUSTRALIAN OFFICE 

8 Irwin Street Bellevue 

W Australia 6056 

Phone. 274-3701 


TAIPEI OFFICE 
William Wang 

Suite 605. Worldwide House 
685MmShengE Rd 
Taipei Taiwan ROC 
Tel (02) 712-8877 Tlx 21405 

MARACAIBO OFFICE 
Jim Stevens 

Av 3FEsq CalleSl 
Centro Com Maelga • Local *5 
Maracaioo Venezuela 4001-A 
Phone 061-913328 
Telex 62344 PEMIN 
CANADIAN OFFICE 

- - PENDING - - 



PROM LASER 

This is the One! Our PROM Burner allows reading, stormg-to-disk recalling ana 
burning. Hi-speed algorithmes burns 2764 
["| |f in 45 seconds' Also handles 2716, 2732 
27128. 27256 Features: Zero insertion 
force sockets On-board Voltage Generator 
No Interference with normal computer 
operations 

BOA-8640-00 $199.00 

MISCELLANEOUS SSS SAVERS 

64K Memory Chips (9) NEC for IBM ICC-7801-00 $ 29.95 

Add-On Memory (up to 512K) supplied OK BOA-8650-00 $149.00 

Floppy Controller. Controls up to four drives. 5’« ’ 48/96 TPI 

80A-6100-00. $95.00 

Monochrome Graphics Card. (Hercules type) (1-2-3 compatible) 720h x 348v 

BOA-8500-00 . $175.00 

Color Graphics Card. 320 x 200 Res. Color. 640 x 200 Monochrome 
BOA-8400-0C $145.00 

Clock Calendar Board. Parallel Port, fits in "short slot w/battery Back up 

BOA-8700-00 . $75.00 

Hard Disk Controller, standard ST-506 interface for DOS 1.1 & 2.0 
BOA-8050-00 $245.00 

300 / 1200 Baud Modem w/PC Talk III Communications Software 

BOA-8725-OO. $239.00 

Monochrome Monitor 18MHz bandwidth, composite input or TTL 

MON-IOOO-OO Green. .$ 99.50 

MON-IOIO-OO Amber. $104.50 


Inquiry 212 

Micro Products 


15392 Assembly Lane • Huntington Beach, CA 92649 


714/898-0840 




































STOP, LOOK & SAVE! 

For Lowest Prices Call (800) 732-0304 




PRINTERS 

OKIDATA 

ML82A. 10” Para. & Ser.$ 299 

ML83A. 15” Para. & Ser. 549 

ML92P. 160cps. 375 

ML92 IBM Graphics Comp. 385 

ML92S, 160 cps. 465 

ML92 Apple Mac. 2K Graphics. 475 

ML93P, 160 cps. 599 

ML93 IBM Graphics Comp. 629 

ML93S, 160 cps. 769 

ML84P. 200 cps. 679 

ML84S. 200 cps. 779 

RITEMAN 

Riteman Plus 120 cps w/Tractor. . . .$ 257 
Riteman Blue Plu^ 140cps IBM ... . 342 

Riteman II 160cps,6K mem. w/Trac. 369 
Riteman 15.160cps, 15” carr. 549 

QUME 

Letterpro20PProp. Spc. Enh Prnt . .$ 449 
Sprint 1140 + , 2K. 40 cps. 

132 col. width . 1249 

STAR MICRONICS 

Gemini 10X. 10”, 120 cps.$ 249 

Gemini 10X PC (IBM Compat.) . 259 

Gemini 15X, 15", 120cps. 349 

Gemini 15X PC (IBM Compat.). 369 

Delta 10,10", 160 cps. 365 

Delta 10 PC. 359 

Powertype, 18 cps Par & Ser. 349 

C. ITOH 

Prowriter8510 AP. 120cps.$ 309 

Prowriter 8510 BC2,120 cps. 399 

Prowriter 8510 SP. 180 cps. 399 

8510 BPI (IBM Compatible). 335 

Prowriter I11550 P, 15” 120 cps. 515 

ProwriterII1550BCD, 15" 120cps .. 549 

1550 BP (IBM Compatible). 529 

1550 SP. 180 cps. 549 

StarwriterF10-40PU.40cps. 929 

Starwriter A10.18cps. 499 

Printmaster F10-55PU. 55 cps. 1069 

SWEET P 

Six Shooter 600.$ 799 

BROTHER 

HR25.$669 

DYNAX 

DX15 By Brother. Same as HR15 . .$ 379 

JUKI 

6100, L.Q. 18cps w/proportional spc.S 399 
6300 Call 

TOSHIBA 

P1351 Dot Matrix, 192 cps, letter quality 
100 cps, does graphics. 3 in 1 printer $1229 
Pi340 same as above but 10” carr.. . 719 

PANASONIC 

1091 w/Tractor, 120cps, 1 yr.war. . .$ 289 

SOFTWARE 

LOTUS DEVELOPMENT CORP. 

Lotus 1-2-3.$ 295 

Symphony. 437 

ASHTON TATE 

DBaseII.$ 329 

DBase III. 419 

MICROPRO INTERNATIONAL 

ProPak (WS/MM/SS/Star Index).$399 

Option Pak (M/M, C/S, S/I). 199 

MICROSOFT 

Softcard (CP/M).$ 239 

Microsoft Word . 315 

Premium Softcard for ME. 319 

Softcard for II & 11+ a 229 


% 










PRINTER 

ACCESSORIES 

ORANGE MICRO 

Grappler + .$ 115 

Buffered Grappler + , 16K exp. 64K . 165 

Mr. Chips for PC & XT, Par. Ser. Clock & 
Cal., 64K Realworld l/F. BSR line l/F. 389 

TOSHIBA 

Bi-Directional Tractor.$ 149 

Font Disk for Down loading PI 351 . . 48 

MICROTEK 

Dumpling GX (same as Grappler+) $ 75 

Dumpling GX w/16K buffer. 149 

Dumpling GX w/32K buffer. 165 

Additional Buffering 16K. 16 

FOURTH DIMENSION 

Par. Card & Cable for Apple.$ 45 

OKIDATA 

Plug and Play for IBM.$ 49 

Okigraph I for82A. 49 

Okigraph I for83A. 49 

Tractor for 82A& 92 . 49 

CABLES 

IBM PC to Parallel Printer.$ 18 

Serial Cable. 18 


MID-WINTER SPECIALS!! 

C.ITOH 8510AP 

LOTUS DEV. 

$309 

1-2-3 $295 

BIZCOMP 

Symphony $437 

Intelli Modem ST 

IBM MONO CARD 

100% Comp. 

W/Printer Port 

w/Smart Com. II & 

$245 

Crosstalk XVI 

MICRO-SCI A.5C 

$369 

Drive w/cable for lie 

QUME LETTERPRO 20 

$189 

$449 

TEAC 55B 

AST RESEARCH 

$129 

Sixpak + w/64K 

PGS HX12 

$249 

$455 


IBM PC ACCESSORIES 


IBM 

IBM Mono Card w/Printer Port.$ 245 

IBM Mono Monitor. 265 

IBM Dos2.1 . 59 

IBM Dos 3.0. 69 

IBM Tech Ref. for PC . 85 

PARADISE 

Modular GraphicsCard.$ 279 

Module A.• 85 

Module B. 189 

PC PEACOCK 

Color Graphics Card w/Par. Printer Port, 
Compat. w/AII IBM Software, 2 yr. war. $ 215 

AST RESEARCH 

Six Pak + w/64K.$ 249 

Mega Plus II. 265 


64K MEMORY UPGRADE 

64K (9 chips) 150 ns, 1 yr.war. 

.$ 29 

QUADRAM 

Quad Color 1 Board . 

.$ 199 

VUTEK 

Vutek - CPS Board, RGB & Composite 

w/Par. & Ser. Ports, 2 Yr. War. 

.$ 239 

STB 

Graphics + 11. 

.$ 359 

TECHMAR 

Graphics Master. 

.$ 459 

PERSYST BOARD 

Bob Hi-Res Display Adp. 

.$ 459 

KEYTRONICS 

KB5151 . 

.$ 185 


APPLE & FRANKLIN ACCESSORIES 


ACCESSORIES 

System Saver.$ 69 

Fan for Apple II & HE w/surge. 37 

pAPPLE 

„ Super Serial Card.$ 139 


MICROMAX 

Viewmax 128K extended 80 col. card 

for Apple HE.$ 129 

80 col. card for Apple II & II +. 139 




DISPLAY MONITORS 

NEC 

JB 1201,80 col., 20MHz.$ 129 

JB 1205(A) 12” Amber. 20MHz. 135 

JCl215ColorCompositw/audio . . . 245 

JC 1216 RGB, Hi-Res/IBM 640 x 300 . 365 

AMDEK 

V300G.$ 129 

V'WIA 1 

v3i0AforiBM Pc!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’. 159 

Color I + .Composite 13”. 279 

Color II +, Hi-Res. 13”/IBM. 389 

Color 300 . 249 

Color 600 . 429 

Color 710. 585 

TAXAN 

IBM Green Monochrome#121.$ 139 

IBM Amber Monochrome#122. 145 

RGB IBM w/Cable #420. 419 

RGB Super Hi-Res. #415. 393 

RGB/Comp. Med. Res. #210. 259 

PRINCETON GRAPHICS 

HX-12 for use with IBM PC.$ 455 

Max 12AmberforlBM . 179 

SR 12 Super Hi-Res. 595 







APPLE 

Apple HE Starter System incl: Apple HE, Tilt 
Monitor, 1 Drive w/contoller, 80 col. 

card. Gall 

Apple lie Lightweight Portable. 999 

IBM 

IBM PC Bare w/cont. & keyboard $1150 

IBMPC64K, 1 Drive.1325 

IBM PC64K, 2 Drives. 1499 

IBM PC, 2 Drives W/256K. 1599 

IBM XT, 128K, 10 Meg., 360K Dr. 3495 

IBM AT Base. Call 

IBM AT Enhanced. Call 

Call About All “AT” Systems 

KAYPRO 

Kay pro II.$1279 

Kaypro 4. 1745 

KayprolO. 2395 

SANYO 

MBC 550-2 W/1320K Drive &sftwr. $ 895 
MBC 555-2 w/2 320K Drives & 

more software. 1075 

Serial Port for Sanyo. 79 

TAVA 

TAVA PCI Par. & 1 Ser. Ports, 128K, 2-320K 

Drives, Color Card & Monitor.$1499 

TAVA XT same as above including 10 meg. 
Hard Disk Drive.$2495 

COMPAQ 

256K. w/2 320K Drives.$2150 

DISK DRIVES 

TANDON 

TM100-2 for IBM PC.$ 145 

TM65-2. Vi Height, 320K. 189 

ALPHA OMEGA 

10 Meg HD for IBM & Comp. w/Cont. Card 
13 Month Warranty.$ 845 

TEAC 

55B Double Sided 360K . .$ 129 2 for 249 

Quad Density. 189 

EPSON 

SD 521 Dbl/Dbl for IBM.$ 149 

Drives For Apple & Franklin 
RANA SYSTEMS 


Elite 1. 

...$ 199 

Elite II . 

... 339 

Elite III. 

... 399 

Controller add. 

.. . 85 

MICRO-SCI 


A-2. 

..$ 179 

A.5C for lie w/cable. 

. . 189 

A.5 Vz height for HE. 

. 209 

Controller Add . 

. . 70 

MODEMS 


ANCHOR 


Mark XII. 

..$ 225 

HAYES MICRO 


300 Baud Smart Modem. 

$ 205 

1200 Baud Smart Modem 

459 

1200 B for IBM PC. 

. 379 

Micro Modem HE. 

259 

Chronograph . 

. . 189 



GIVE US A CHANCE TO BEAT THE 
COMPETITIONS ADVERTISED PRICE. 

IF YOU SEE IT ADVERTISED FOR LESS, CALL 
COMPUTER CONNECTION FIRST FOR LOWEST QUOTE! 


MAIL ORDER: 

12841 S. Hawthorne Blvd., No. 585 
Hawthorne, California 90250 


NO SURCHARGE FOR CREDIT CAROS 


We accept VISA, MasterCard, 
COD (w/deposit), Certified 
Checks or Wire Transfers. 
Minimum Shipping Charge S4.00. 
Some items subject to back order. 
California Res. add 6V«% Sales 
Tax. Prices subject to change 
without notice. 


ORDER LINE 
[ 800 ] 732-0304 

[Outside California) 

[ 213 ] 514-9019 

(inside California) 

Mon.-Fri. 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. 
Saturday 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. 

CUSTOMER SERVICE: 
[213] 51-4-9019 

Mon.-Fri. 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. 


Inquiry 64 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 435 





















































































































































Announcing 4 New Collector Edition 





The 4 Byte covers shown helow are the newest additions to the Collector Edition 
Byte Cover series. Each full color print is 11" x 14", including a l‘/»" border, and is 
part of an edition strictly limited to 1.000 prints. Each print is a faithful reproduction 
of the original Byte painting, printed on museum quality acid free paper, and is 
personally inspected, signed and numbered by the artist, Robert Tinney. A Certificate of 
Authenticity accompanies each print. 


Collector Edition Prints are carefully packaged flat to avoid bending, and are 
shipped first class within one week of receipt of order. The price of each print is 
$30. All a prints are available for only $100. 

Other Collector Edition Byte Covers are also available from Robert Tinney 
Graphics. For a color brochure, or to order one or more of the prints shown, 
please check the appropriate box in the coupon below. 



Please send me the following Prints ($30). All 4 only $100 

QTY. TITLE A PRINT NO. AMOUNT 

_ _ $ _ 

_ _ $ _ 

_ _ $ - 

postage & handling $3.00 (Overseas $8 00) $ - 

TOTAL $ _ 

□ Please send me your color brochure. 


□ I have enclosed check or money order 

□ Visa □ MasterCard 

Card No._ 

Exp. Date:_ 

SHIP MY PRINTS (OR BROCHURE) TO: 

Name _ 

Address:_ 

City: _ 

State:_Zip:. 


Mail this coupon to: 

robert tinney graphics 

1864 N. Pamela Drive 
Baton Rouge, LA 
70815 



436 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 















































£ FREE 
^ SHIPPING!! 

‘That’s Right - WE PAY 
To Ship YOUR Purchase 

^ See Details Below 


Ultraterm 244.99 


MONITORS Amdek 300A Ap 
Amdek310A-lBM 
Princeton HX-12 RGB-IBM 
Princeton Max-12 Amber -IBM 
Quadram Quadchrome RGB-IBM 
Taxan 420 RGB-Ap/IBM 
Taxan 12" Amber-IBM 
Taxan 12" Amber 20mhz-Ap 

Other Monitors & Printers - SCALL 


PRINTERS C-ITOH8510 
Epson PX80 

Okidata 92P w/Plug h Play-IBM 
DRIVES: 'h Height-Ap 
Micro SciA-2-Ap 
Teac^Height-lBM 


159.99 

179.99 

459.99 


379.99 

429.99 
SCALL 

189.99 

209.99 

179.99 
SCALL 

4.99 

7.99 

2.99 


Enhancer II 
Function Strip 
Hardswitch 
Micromodem Chip 
PSIO 

Softswitch 

Ultraplan 

Videoterm w/Softswitch & Inverse 


PRE-BOOTS Apple Writer 
Apple Writer lor Ultraterm 
Vi&calc 

Visicalc with Memory Expansion 
Visicalc for Ultraterm 


RIBBONS Brother 
MX&FX80 
MX&FX100 

OKI 82 83.92.934 Gemini 


Ap BRODERBUND Gumball 

Ap Choplifter. Drol 

Ap MICROLAB Crises Mountain/Dino Eggs 

Ap ODESTA Chess 

Ap SIERRA ON-LINE Frogger 

Ap SIR TECH Knight of Diamonds 

Ap Legacy of Uylgamyn 

Ap Wizardry 

Ap Wiziprmt 

Ap SUBLOGIC Flight Simulator II 

Ap ULTIMA III 

IBM BRODERBUND Serpentine 

IBM MICROSOFT Flight Simulator II 

IBM SIERRA ON-LINE Crossfire 

IBM SIR-TECH Wizardry 

ApIBM BRODERBUND Loderunner 

Ap/IBM Apple Panic 

Ap/IBM MICROLAB Miner 2(M9er 

Ap IBM SIERRA ON-LINE Ultima II 

AorlBM SUBLOGIC Night Mission Pinball 


FOR APPLE & IBM 


FOR IBM 

Microfazer (All Configurations) 

Quad 512+64K : 

Quadboard l or II No K ! 

Quadboard I or ll 64K ! 

Ouadcotorl ! 

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MEMORY CHIPS 
Top Quality for 
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y CONNECT! 


Infostar 
Mailmerge 
Spellstar 
Wordstar 
Wordstar Pro 
Pro Options Pack 


259.99 

139.99 

139.99 

239.99 

349.99 

181.99 


ASCII EXPRESS-Ap 
CROSSTALK-IBM 

HAYES MODEMS 300 Baud Smartmodem 
1200 Baud Smartmodem 
1200B-IBM 
Micromodem lie 
SOFTERM 2-Ap 
NOVATION MODEMS J Cat 
103 Smart Cat 
103/212 Auto Cat 
Cat 

Applecat II300 Baud 
Applecat Upgrade to 1200 Baud 
Expansion Module 


109.99 

139.99 

209.99 

479.99 

409.99 

239.99 


CHARTSTAR - NEW 
Business Graphics Package 
For IBM 319.99 


109.99 

169.99 

399.99 

135.99 

249.99 

309.99 
29.99 


CUTTHROATS Underwater Treasure Hunt' - NEW 27.99 

DEADLINE Detective Case and YOU’RE IT 34.99 

ENCHANTER Begmnmg-Magician Mission 27.99 

INFIDEL Enter The Lost Pyramid 31.99 

PLANETFALL investigate a Wild New World 27.99 

SEASTALKER Junior Level Rescue Mission 27.99 

SORCERER Mystic Clues & Magic Encounters 31.99 

STARCROSS Sci-Fi Adventure, 2188 A D 34.99 

SUSPENDED 3 Levels and Custom Options 34.99 

WITNESS Classic Murder Mystery 27.99 

ZORKI All-Time Most Popular 27.99 

ZORKII-III Advanced Levels 31.99 

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 27.99 
Suspect 34.99 


TRILLIUM & WINDHAM CLASSICS 

NEW Text Adventure Games 
by Famous Authors 

- SCALL - 


TELMERGE - IBM 119.99 
New Telecommunications 
Program From MicroPro 


Dysan5'/.*SSfOO 29.99 

Dysan5VDSDD 38.99 

Maxell 5'/*' SS/DD 24.99 

Maxell 5’/*' DS/DO 34.99 

Memorex 3W SS/DO 41.99 
Memorex 5W SS/DD 19.99 
Memorex 5’/. “DS/DD 26.99 
Flip h File w/Locktray Holds 25-5VT 
Flip ’n File w/Locktray Holds 50-514" 
Library Case (Assorted Colors) 
Media Mate Holds 50-5%” Diskettes 
Media Mate Holds 30-3% ' Diskettes 
Printer Stand-Large (Plexiglass) 
Printer Stand-Small (Plexiglass) 


-- 


BASIC SKILLS 

Ap DLM School Versions Available 

Ap Alien Addition/Alligator Mix 

Ap Demolition DnnsiorvDragon Mix 

Ap Minus Mission Multiplication 
Ap Spelling WiZ'Verb Viper 

Ap Word invasiorvWord Radar 
Ap LEARNING COMPANY Juggles Rainbow 

Ap Gertrudes Puzzle/Secret 

Ap Magic Spell/Bumble Plot 

Ap Number Stumper 
Ap Rocky's Boots 
Ap PEACHTREE Algebra Mil 

Ap Counting Bee 
Ap Decimals/Fractions30 

IBM LEARNING COMPANY Addition Magician 

IBM Magic Spells 

IBM PEACHTREE Algebra I 

Ap iBM SPINNAKER Alphabet Zoo 
Ap IBM Delta Drawing 

Ap IBM Pacemaker Traction Fever 

Ap IBM Hey Diddte/Kmdercomp 

ApIBM Snooper Troops Ml 
Ap/IBM Story Machine 

Ap/IBM LEARNING COMPANY Reader Rabbit 
Ap/1BM Moptown Hotel/Parade 

Ap/IBM Word Spinner 

ADVANCED SKILLS 

Ap MASTERTYPE 

Ap MICROSOFT Typing Tutor II 

Ap PEACHTREE PSAT or SAT 

IBM CAi Masters 

iBM Subjects 
IBM MASTERTYPE 

Muppet Learning Keys - NEW 59.99 


FOR THE HOME 

BRODERBUND Bank Street Writer 
Bank Street Speller 
CONTINENTAL Tax Advantage 
Home Accountant 
Home Accountant (Mac) 

SIERRA ON-LINE Homeword 
MONOGRAM Dollars & Sense 
BRODERBUND Bank Street Writer 
CONTINENTAL Home Accountant 
Tax Advantage 
MONOGRAM Dollars & Sense 

FOR THE BUSINESS 

BPI(GL AP AR. PAY) 

CONTINENTAL FCM-First Class Mail 
KENSINGTON Format H 
PFS Report 
File. Graph Write 
SENSIBLE SPELLER 
SIERRA ON-LINE Screenwriter II 
ASHTONTATE dBASEII 
dBASE III 
Encyclopedia 
FrameWork 
Friday 

CONTINENTAL FCM-First Class Mail 
Ultrafile 

LIFETREE Volkswriter Deluxe 
LOTUS Symphony 
MULTIMATE 
PFS Report 
File. Graph. Write 

MICRO COOKBOOK 

For Apple 4 IBM q£ 

Includes Recipes 0 I .5/% 


SCALL 
ea22.99 
ea 22.99 
ea22.99 
ea31.99 
ea31.99 

21.99 
ea 29.99 
ea26.99 

26.99 

34.99 
ea31.99 

23.99 
ea33.99 

26.99 

27.99 

34.99 

21.99 

32.99 
ea23.99 
ea21.99 
ea29.99 

23.99 

26.99 
ea26.99 


mmmmm . " ■ 


BEAGLE Apple Mechanic Beagle Bag 
Beagle Basic Double Take 
Dos Bos/Silicon Salad 
Fat Cat 
GPLE 

Pronto Dos/Frame Up/Utility City 
EASTSIDE Wildcard H 
FINGERPRINT Epson Enhancement 
KOALA Touch Pad 
MOCKINGBOARD - Speech Chips SCALL 109.99 
THUNDERCLOCK 99.99 

KOALA Speed Key 79.99 

Speed Key System 159.99 

Touch Pao 95.99 

Touch Pad PCjr 85.99 

NORTON UTILITIES 55.99 

SIDEWAYS 44.99 

CENTRAL POINT Copy II + /PC 25.99 

GRAPHICS SOFTWARE 

BEAGLE Typefaces 15.99 

Graphics NEW 44.99 

Alpha Plot 25.99 

TnpleDump -NEW 31.99 

Rex Text 19.99 

BRODERBUND Print Shop 39.99 

PENGUIN Complete Graphics System 44.99 

Graphics Magician 37.99 


ea19.99 

ea23.99 

ea17.99 


Ap ALS Z-Engme (Replaces Z-Card) 

Ap DAN PAYMAR Lower Case 1, Rev 1-6 
Ap Lower Case 2, Rev 7 
Ap JOYSTICK Kraft or TG 

Ap MICROSOFT Softcard 
Ap Ram Card 

Ap ORANGE MICRO Grappler + 

Ap Bufferboard 

Ap Buffered Grappler 

Ap TITAN Accelerator lie 

Ap Neptune 64K 

Ap Saturn 64K Ram 

IBM AST I/O Plus 

IBM Mega Plus 

IBM Six Pack Plus 

IBM JOYSTICK Kraft or TG 

IBM PLANTRONICS Color Plus Board 

IBM TITAN 64K Board 

Ap/IBM KRAFT Paddles 

Ap/IBM TG Paddles 


ea275.99 

59.99 

109.99 

79.99 
ea89.99 

79.99 

81.99 

299.99 

474.99 

59.99 

474.99 

184.99 

71.99 

119.99 

219.99 

499.99 

379.99 


279.99 
SCALL 

289.99 

279.99 

44.99 

375.99 

499.99 

31.99 

27.99 


KENSINGTON 
System Saver-AP 65.00 
PC Saver-IBM 29.99 


MAIL AND 
PHONE ORDERS 

Inquiries Welcome! 

(408) 985-0400 

MAIL, PHONE, WILL-CALL 
SERVICE FROM 8AM (PST) 


• No Charge For Credit Cards 

• Prices Subject To Change 

• Software Sales Are Final 

‘Most Items Shipped Via 
2-Day Service - NO CHARGE 
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AMERICAN) 
jj EXPRESS 


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. ★ GUARANTEED Fair Pricing Is Our Policy ★ 


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IBM PC/XT ADD-ON CARDS 



FC 135-40 Features: 


•Full Replacement 
to your regular IBM" PC 
65 W. Power Supply 

•4 Disk Drives Connectors 

•Built-in High Air Flow 
High Quality Cooling Fan 

• (Op File #E82453 
•Schematics included 
•One year Warranty 

• + 5V/15A, +12V/4.2-8.5A 
(peak) 

+ 12V/1A, — 5V/1A, (max. 
outputs) 


FORTRON CORPORATION Power Supply Professional 

3797 YALE WAY, FREMONT, CA 94538 ORDER TOLL FREE: [800] 821-9771 

INFORMATION & CALIF. RES. [415] 490-8171 

Quality That You Can Trust 

140 W.(max) Power Switcher 

#FC 135-40 



IDEAL FOR: 

•Upgrade IBM® PC 
•OEM Manufacturer 
•Do it yourself an IBM® 
PCXT Compatible 


Please do not confuse this high quality 
product with the cheap imported units 
sold by others because of same outlook. 


only -sb* 

175.°° 

[Assembled & Fully Tested in USA] 


Dealers/OEMs 
are Invited 


For "Build Your Own Computer" and OEM's Convenience, we also carry: 


FC 427 Keyboard 

•For IBM ‘ PC or its compatible products 
•20 Million Time 'tnQ OO 

Life Cycle IU3. 

•Light on Num and 

Caps Lock Keys 

. W » 1 

FC 630A-2 Cabinet 

•IBM identical 

•Use FORTRON FC 135-40 power supply 
•7 & 8 slots rear QQ OO 

panels, good for •'**. 

0.75" or 1" apart 
slot connectors. 

HSC 130-40 130 Watt Switching Power Supply 

•Good For Faraday, DTC Mega- 169.^^ 

board, Colby Computer and Other 

Compatible Level CPU boards 
•Backside On-Off Switch ^ 

•Use Cabinet FC-630 

FC-330 Hard Disk Controller 

•Up to 2 Hard Disk OCQ OO 

Drives COtJ. 

•Fully Buffered I/O 

ecc mmMMk 

•Accepts 5 to . .. 

20 MB Hard Disk 

FC-630 Cabinet 

•On-off switch to be on back side 
•Use FORTRON HSC-130-40 power 
supply QQ OO 

•Good for Faraday 
and other compat¬ 
ible level CPU 
boards. 

Monochrome/Graphic/Printer Card CT-6040 

•80 x 25 Text Mode (Default) 

•64K Graphic Display Memory 

•18 KHz Monitor and Printer Interface pfiCj OO 

FC-230 Floppy Disk 
Controller 

•Drives 4 x 514" FDD 109.°° 

•IBM fully t_ 

FC-530 Monochrome Card 

•8 x25 Screen 

•9 x 14 Character Box 1 5 9 ° 

•7x9 Character 
•TTL Level < 1 

dllStH'i 


FC-730 Multifunction Card, 
Expandable to 384K 

•From 64 to 384K qq 

•1 RS-232C, 1 Cen tU3. 

tronics Printer (64K on Card) 

Ports ; ; 

FC 830 512K RAM Card 

•From 64K to 512K 

•Boundary and 189. 

Total Memory (64K on Board) 

Color/Graphic/Printer Card CT-6020 

•RGB Color Port and Parallel 

640 Dots x 200 Lines B/W 
•Text Mode: 

40 Columns x25 Rows Color / B/W 99 Q 

80 Columns x 25 Rows Color / B/W " 

FC-930 RS232/Parallel 
Printer Port Card 

* | LMHUg j 

Fully IBM 

Compatible ASi • L, 

9goo - 

FC-940 RS232C/Clock 
Calendar Card 

•One RS-232C Port, " § 

Battery Back-up 

99.°° 

Hard Disk Drives 769.°° 

(with cable & controller) (10 MB) 

Half Height, Top Brands, 10-32 MB Available 

64K DRAM 
32.°°/9 pcs. 

2764 EPROM 

5. 25 /pcs. 

8237A-5 12.50 

8284A 3.90 

8284C 1.50 

MC1489 0.29 

74LS245 0.65 

Cable For IBM PC/AT 89.°° 

RS-232 (D Type 9 Pin to D Type 25 Pin) 


IBM PC/XT ADD-ON CARDS 


438 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 369 for Dealers. Inquiry 370 for End-Users. 


IBM PC/XT ADD-ON CARDS 
































Contact us for other low prices on hardware and software. 

Next Day Air Extra 

ALL PRICES INCLUDE 
FREE SHIPPING IN USA. 

These prices current as of December 21,1984. Call for latest prices. 



TEAC 

SVB. Half Height DVDD 


* $129 


PANASONIC 

JA4SI /. Half Height DVDD 

$109 

Same as Shugart SA-iSS 



TAPE BACKUP SYSTEM 

• Half Hcighl • 10 AS Meg 

• law Power Formatted Capacity C C A C 

• fscs Floppy • l sed in Compaq 
Controller Card Dcskpro 


Another PC s Limited Exclusive! 

FREE UP AN EXTRA SLOT! 

Our specially-designed combined 
Floppy/Hard Disk Controller 
gives you 4 system expansion slots 
open for additional boards! 

IBM PC 
256K 

One 360K 
Floppy Drive 
10 MEG Internal HD 



$2195 


~~ ****** M 

64K RAM 

Set of 9 chips, 200 or ISO Nanoseconds 

Quantities of 


$25 


$19 


L 


IBM PC’ $1595 

256K, 1 DS/DD Drive IHUivj trademark of MW torp. 

Slut available Kith 

10, 20, 33, and 42 Mogabyto Internal Hard Disk. 

Set brio* (or detail* 


with Hard Disk by 

•• Microscience 
International 


Corporation 



10 MEG INTERNAL HARD DISK SYSTEM 

Our 10 megabyte Hard Disk System uses a state-of-the-art Half Height Low- 
Power Hard Disk. therth\ eliminating overheating problems typically associ¬ 
ated with Hard Drives The system uses DOS 1 I or 3 0 without any modifica¬ 
tions is Plug Compatible with the IBM XT. and gives you the ability to boot 
directly from the hard disk The system comes complete and ready to install 
with the low power Hard Disk. Controller. Cables. Manual Software, and 
Mounting Hardware 


w ith Hard Disk by 

Shugart 



One year warranty. 


Same hard drive as used h\ 
Ouhit and Kamerman Labs 


$629 


One year warranty. 


Same hard drive as used hv 
Wav nard Electronics 


10, 20, 33, and 42 MEG INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL HARD DISK SYSTEMS 


Externally mounted with independent power supply and fan 
Fully DOS 1 I or 3 0 compatible Boots from Hard Disk 
•20. 33 and 42 Meg 
internal disks include 

extender power supply One year warranty 



10 MEG 

20 MEG 

33 MEG 

42 MEG 

Internal 

$629 

$995 

$1395 

$1595 

External 

$829 

$1095 

1 $1495 

| $1695 




comPAa 


256K, 1/360K drive, 
10 Meg Internal 


Functional equivalent 
to a Compaq Plus. 

$2995 


Now using 3% " shock-mounted Winchester drives. 
The same as used in the Compaq Plus. 

Also available with 2 half-height drives—$3193. 


CDC 9409—$159 HARDWARE 


AST SivPak Plus »/38-tK . 
AST SixPak Plus w/6-tk 
PC Net Blossom W/64K 
Hercules Color Card. 


.SOU 

.*259 

.*239 

.IPS 

AST Monograph Plus Parallel/( lock.*3-*9 

Hercules Graphics Card »/Parallel .*3-»9 

Paradise Modular Graphics Card.*295 

Paradise Module A Parallel Pori. i 69 

Paradise Module B6s 2S6K/Clock.*209 


Persysf Time Spectrum 
w/OK—$189 


Persysi Monochrome Card w/Parallel.IPS 

PGSHXI2.I-P9 

PGS MAX-12.IP9 

Epson.CALL 

Juki 6100 .1429 

Okidau 92/93/84.t.499H639/ri9 

TI8SS.P29 

Hayes Smartmodem 1200.Is89 

Hayes Smartmodem I200B .1399 


Sidekick — $35 

Non>Copy Protected Sidekick — $59 

Copy II PC.124 

Copywrite.CALL 

Disk Explorer.CALL 

Zero Disk.CALL 

Prokey 3.0.$89 

Sideways.$39 

Thinktank. $119 

Harvard Project Manager.$259 


SOFTWARE 

dBase III—$375 
Norton Utilities- -$59 

Borland Gift Pack—$69 

Wordstar 2000 .$299 

Wordstar 2000 * .S359 


Turbo Pascal — $35 
Turbo Toolbox — $35 

Multimate.$269 

PFS/Ciraph.$89 

PFS/Plan.$89 

PFS/Proof.$69 

PFS/Write. $89 

PFS/Access. $63 

PFS/File.$89 

PFSfReport.$79 


Microsciencc International Corporation. Irwin 
Magnetics. TEAC. Panasonic. Shugart, Qubic'. 
IBM. Kamerman Labs, and Maynard Electronics 
are trademarks of their respective companies. 


PC'S LIMITED 


ORDERS ONLY, CALL 1-800-IBM-5150 

7801 N. Lamar, #E-200, Austin, Texas 78752 
All other inquiries, call (512) 452-0323 


No surcharge on VISA or MasterCard 
3 X surcharge on American Express 


Inquiry 248 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 439 









































































Now, the lowest 
prices ever on 

3M Scotch’ 

? DISKETTES 


5V4" 8SDD 


$906 

SDD 20 


5W DSDD_ 

5'/4* SSD0-96TPI — $2.29 ea 5%' DSDD-96TPI — $2.85 ea 
SOFT SECTOR ONLY! MINIMUM ORDER: 20 DISKETTES 

These are factory-fresh 3M diskettes packed in boxes of 10 with 
Tyvek sleeves, reinforced hubs, identification labels and write- 
protect tabs 

3.5" MICRO-DISKETTES —SS-135 TPI -> $2.89 ea 
LIFETIME WARRANTY ON ALL 3M SCOTCH DISKETTES! 
FOR ORDERS ONLY: INFORMATION & 

1-800-621-6827 inquiries 

(In Illinois: 1-312-944-2788) 1-312-944-2788 

HOURS: 8AM-5PM Central Time, Monday-Friday 

WE WILL BEAT ANY NATIONALLY ADVERTISED PRICE 
ON THE SAME PRODUCTS AND QUANTITIES! 

DISK WORLD!, Inc. 

Suite 4806 • 30 East Huron Street • Chicago. Illmos 60611 


DISK Authorized Distributor 

Information Processing 

WORLD! 


FANTASTIC LOW PRICES ON 

BASF ~ 

Je) QUALIMETRIC §3 
DISKETTES! 


n 41!s» $159 

Qty 20 DSDD I Qty- 20 

PACKED IN PLASTIC LIBRARY CASES! 

BASF QUALIMETRIC DISKETTES have a LIFETIME WAR¬ 
RANTY and are packed in PLASTIC LIBRARY CASES with Tyvek 
sleeves, reinforced hubs, user identification labels and write- 
protect tabs. 

SOFT SECTOR ONLY! MINIMUM ORDER 20 DISKETTES 
BASF 3 5" MICRO-FLOPPIES BASF S'/THIGH DENSITY 
FOR IBM PC AT 

SSDD-135 TPI -*$3.02ea DSDD-HD -$4.72ea 

FOR ORDERS ONLY: INFORMATION & 

1-800-621-6827 inquiries: 

(In Illinois: 1-312-944-2788) 1-312-944-2788 

HOURS 8AM-5PM Central Time, Monday-Friday 

WE WILL BEAT ANY NATIONALLY ADVERTISED PRICE 
ON THE SAME PRODUCTS AND QUANTITIES! 


niQK Authorized Reseller 

Information Processing !■ DACp 

WORLD! Media 


Incredible value! 

Nashua. 

Diskettes 


LIFETIME WARRANTY! 


$i05£ss,*, $-!15 ea 

I Qty 50 5V4"DSDD I Qty. 50 

These are poly-bagged diskettes packaged with Tyvek sleeves, 
reinforced hubs, user identification labels and write-protect tabs. 

NASHUA Corporation is a half-billion dollar corporation and a 
recognized leader in magnetic media. 

SOFT SECTOR ONLY! Sold in multiples of 50 only! 

FOR ORDERS ONLY: INFORMATION & 

1-800-621-6827 inquiries: 

(In Illinois: 1-312-944-2788) 1-312-944-2788 

HOURS: 8AM-5PM Central Time, Monday-Friday 

WE WILL BEAT ANY NATIONALLY ADVERTISED PRICE 
ON THE SAME PRODUCTS AND QUANTITIES! 

DISK WORLD!, Inc. 

Suite 4806 • 30 East Huron Street • Chicago, lllinos 60611 


DISK 

WORLD! 


NASHUA 

Authorized Distributor MAGNETIC 
MEDIA 


Save 20% to 60% 
Or More 


On all your 
OFFICE & COMPUTER SUPPLIES! 

Now, you can enjoy DISK WORLD! savings on more than 
21.000 office and computer supply products! You name it, we got 
it. at tremendous savings 

Everything from Scotch “ Tape to Post-It Notes" to paper clips 
and rubber bands and thousands of computer products as well! 

Our catalog is huge more than 700 pages, listing more than 
21.000 items. 

We have to charge for it: $10 00 to be exact. 

But we include a $50.00 worth of discount coupons that you 
can use on future orders. 

Now. it's DISK WORLD! for every office or computer supply 
need and always at tremendous savings! 

This offer supercedes all prior catalog offers. 

Not responsible for typographical errors 

FOR ORDERS ONLY: INFORMATION & 

1-800-621-6827 inquiries: 

(In Illinois: 1-312-944-2788) 1-3 1 2-944-2 7 88 

HOURS. 8AM-5PM Central Time, Monday-Friday 

WE WILL BEAT ANY NATIONALLY ADVERTISED PRICE 
ON THE SAME PRODUCTS AND QUANTITIES! 

DISK WORLD!, Inc. 

Suite 4806 • 30 East Huron Street • Chicago, lllinos 60611 


DISK 

WORLD! 


DISK WORLD! 

Ordering & Shipping 
Instructions 


Shipping: 5 ’A" & 3.5" DISKETTES—Add $3.00 per each 100 or 
fewer diskettes Other Items: Add shipping charges as shown in 
addition to other shipping charges Payment: VISA and MASTER¬ 
CARD accepted COD Orders: Add additional $3 00 Special Han¬ 
dling charge AP0, FP0, AK, HI & PR Orders: Include shipping 
charges as shown and additional 2% of total order amount to 
cover PAL and insurance Taxes: I" nois residents only, add 8% 
sales tax 

Prices subject to change without notice 
This ad supercedes all other ads 
Not responsible for typographical errors 
MINIMUM TOTAL ORDER: $35.00 


FOR ORDERS ONLY: 

1-800-621-6827 

(In Illinois: 1-312-944 2788) 


INFORMATION & 
INQUIRIES: 

1-312-944-2788 


HOURS: 8AM-5PM Central Time 
Monday-Friday 

WE WILL BEAT ANY NATIONALLY ADVERTISED PRICE 
ON THE SAME PRODUCTS AND QUANTITIES! 

DISK WORLD!, Inc. 

Suite 4806 • 30 East Huron Street • Chicago, lllinos 60611 


DISK 

WORLD! 


DISKETTES 
The great unknown! 


Q Q C -sursaoo $-J 09 

W W Q,y 50 s W DSDD - I Q,y 50 

You’ve used these diskettes hundreds of 
times , as copy-protected originals on some of 
the most popular software packages. They’re 
packed in poly-bags of 25 with Tyvek sleeves, 
reinforced hubs, user identification labels and 
write-protect tabs. 

LIFETIME WARRANTY! 

SOFT SECTOR ONLY! Sold in multiples 
of 50 only. 

FOR ORDERS ONLY: INFORMATION & 

1-800-621-6827 inquiries: 

(In Illinois: 1-312-944-2788) 1-312-944-2788 

HOURS 8AM-5PM Central Time, Monday-Friday 

WE WILL BEAT ANY NATIONALLY ADVERTISED PRICE 
ON THE SAME PRODUCTS AND QUANTITIES! 

DISK WORLD!, Inc. 

Suite 4806 • 30 East Huron Street • Chicago, lllinos 60611 


DISK 

WORLD! 


ATHANA 

Authorized Distributor MAGNETIC 
MEDIA 


DISKETTE 
STORAGE CASES 


AMARAY MEDIA-MATE 50: A REVOLUTION 
IN DISKETTE STORAGE 

Every once in a while, someone takes the 
simple and makes it elegant' This unit holds 
50 5'/4 m diskettes, has grooves for easy 
f stacking, inside nipples to keep diskettes 
from slipping and several other features We 

like it 1 CIO OR • $20 ° 

O IU jJ ea Shpng 

DISKE TTE 7 0 STORAGE: STILL A GREAT BUY. 

Dust-free storage for 70 5%" diskettes 
Six dividers included. An excellent value. 

_ __ 51195 


k DISK CADDIES ^ 1 ,,%/v Shpng 

The original flip-up holder for 10 5V4' 
■"diskettes Beige or grey only $1.65 ea 

+ 20C Shpng 

FOR ORDERS ONLY: INFORMATION & 

1-800-621-6827 inquiries: 

(In Illinois: 1-312-944-2788) 1-3 1 2-944-27 88 

HOURS: 8AM-5PM Central Time, Monday-Friday 

WE WILL BEAT ANY NATIONALLY ADVERTISED PRICE 
ON THE SAME PRODUCTS AND QUANTITIES! 

DISK WORLD!, Inc. 

Suite 4806 • 30 East Huron Street • Chicago, lllinos 60611 


DISK 

WORLD! 


PRINTER 

RIBBONS: 


at 

extraordinary 

prices! 

Brand new ribbons, manufactured to Original Equipment 
Manufacturer s specifications, in housings. (Not re-mked or 
spools only) 

LIFETIME WARRANTY! 

Epson MX-70/80 $3.58 ea. + 25C Shpng 
Epson MX-100 $4.95 ea. + 25C Shpng 

Okidata Micro83 $1.48 ea. + 25C Shpng. 
Okidata Micro84 $3.66 ea. + 25C Shpng. 

FOR ORDERS ONLY: INFORMATION & 

1-800-621-6827 inquiries: 

(In Illinois: 1-312-944-2788) 1-312-944-2788 

HOURS: 8AM-5PM Central Time, Monday-Friday 

WE WILL BEAT ANY NATIONALLY ADVERTISED PRICE 
ON THE SAME PRODUCTS AND QUANTITIES! 

DISK WORLD!, Inc. 

Suite 4806 • 30 East Huron Street • Chicago, lllinos 60611 


The value leader in i DISK 
And accessories. J WORLD! 


PAPER: 

Save 50% or more! 


We buy paper by the TRUCKLOAD from the 
two biggest mills in the country. 

Therefore, we charge a lot less than you’ve 
been paying! 

For the complete DISK WORLD paper 
catalogs and price lists, call 1-312-944-2788 or 
write us. (Please do not use the “800" line for 
paper catalog requests, unless you are also 
placing an order. 

Don’t spend more than you have to for top- 
quality computer printer paper. Call DISK 
WORLD! today. 

INFORMATION & INQUIRIES: 
1-312-944-2788 

HOURS: 8AM-5PM Central Time 
Monday-Friday 

WE WILL BEAT ANY NATIONALLY ADVERTISED PRICE 
ON THE SAME PRODUCTS AND QUANTITIES! 

DISK WORLD!, Inc. 

Suite 4806 • 30 East Huron Street • Chicago, lllinos 60611 


DISK 

WORLD! 


Where paper 
Costs less! 


440 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 93 







































ESTABLISHED 1977 


CompuPro 

SYSTEM 816/B TWO USER $4,899 

SYSTEM 816/10 H 40 40Mb H D $5,995 

FOR 40Mb H D OPTION ADD $1,900 

TO HAVE 2ND 8 FLPY W/ H D $395 

5%" H.D. SUBSYSTEMS 

W/ CONTROLLER. CP/M 806.86 DRIVERS. 
CABLES. CABINET. FAN. P/S. ETC 


27Mb 


42Mb 


85Mb 


R9DIME 

ounnium 

MICROPOL1S 

M^^or 

M^^or 


90 mSEC $1,525 


45 mSEC $1,995 
30 mSEC $2,425 


30 mSEC $2,995 


30 mSEC $3,695 


140Mb IVVcCdOT 30 mSEC $4,395 

CPU 286 A&T W/ 287 MATH CHIP $1,496 

CPU 32016 W/ MMU 6 MHz $699 

HUDSON 8087 PIGGY BACK FOR 8086/88 $436 
RAM 22 266K STATIC 86 .1 6 AST $ 1,075 

DISK 2 A 8 .T 8 H.D. CNTRL SET $669 

FUJITSU 23028 20Mb 8 ' ADD-ON H.D. $1,996 


SMC 200 DUAL DRV SMD l/F CTRL BD 
DGC 100 CTRL BD./ 6 V 4 " HD. ST 606 l/F 


$600 

$326 


QUASI DISK 61 2K RAM DISK $736 

QUASI DISK 2Mb $1,736 

QUASI DISK 4Mb $3,230 

BATTERY BACK UP $169 

| SYNTECH 
DATA 
I SYSTEMS 

EXPANDORAM 4 $826 

EXPANDORAM 4 W/ EDC $1,436 

SD 300 CHASSIS W/ 6 SLOT $399 

MORROW B 

PIVOT PORTABLE W/ DUAL 6 V 4 DRVS. BATT 

266K. MODEM. MSDOS. NEWWORD CALL 

MD3 W/TERMINAL & EPSON FX100 $1,999 

MD 6 W/TERMINAL 8 . EPSON FX100 $1,999 

M011 W/TERMINAL & EPSON FX100 $2,996 


/ 


l/ A 


Intercontinental 
Micro Systems 


CPZ 48006 6 MHz MASTER 
266KMB MEMORY BOARD 
CPS-16 266K 8 MHz 8086 SLV 
CPS B4D 64K RAM SLAVE 6 MHz 
CPS B 6 A 128K RAM SLAVE 6 MHz 
MUTD-E Z80 MULTI-TURBODOS 


PC-SLAVE/16-256K smhz 

2 SERIAL PORTS - TURN YOUR 
PC INTO A HIGH SPEED MULTI-USER 
MACHINE W/ TODAY S TECHNOLOGY 
SUPER SIX 128 6 MHz 
SUPER SLAVE 128 6 MHz 
SUPER 1 86 256K MSTR SLAVE 4 USERS 
CP/M 3 0 

TURBODOS VER 14 8 BIT MULTI-USER 


$750 

$739 

$525 

$1,295 

$300 

$450 


5UCDN 


MA612 W/ PAK II $599 


SoA/l 


PERSONAL SPEECH 
SYSTEM 


S-100 DIV./696 CORP. 
14455 NORTH 79TH ST. 
SCOTTSDALE. AZ 85260 


ProModem 1200 from.. 


HAYES COMPAT W/ LOTS OF FEATURES 
W/ MAC PAC 


$326 

$389 


US ROBOTICS 


SALES 800-528-3138 

CUST. SERVICE/TECH. 602-991-7870 
TELEX 165025 FTCC SEC PHX 


25Mb 8 ' CARTRIDGE $139 
5Mb 6 ’/«" CARTRIDGE $89 

r MDID 6 Vi" SSDD BOX/10 $18 

Ik MD2D 6V«" DSDD BOX/10 $22 

M MD2D 96TPI 6V4" DSDD BOX/10 $34 
FD2D 1024N 8 ' DSDD BOX/10 $32 


PASSWORD 1200 AUTO ANS /DIAL 
IBM PERSONAL MODEM W/ TELPAC 

~ 1 : SOFTWARE Z 


$296 

$289 


8'' SSDD OR AS SPECIFIED 
SOFTWARE IS NOT RETURNABLE 

BDS C COMPILER 8 BIT $99 

COMPUTER INNOVATIONS C 86 *C ' $299 

COMPUVIEW VEDIT 86 = $166 MS DOS= $120 
SORCIM SUPER CALC 3 IBM PC $246 

DataFlex MULTI-USER DATA BASE CALL 

NEW WORD WORD PROCESSOR $169 

30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE 
LATTICE C (CP/M 86 8 . MS/PC DOS) $316 


H DIGITAL RESEARCH 


"C" LANGUAGE COMPILER 86 

~ TERMINALS 


LIBERTY TERMINALS 
QUMEQVT102G $419 

WYSE-50 14" 132 COLUMN $519 


monitors: 


AMDEK 300A AMBER MONITOR 
PRINCETON GRAPHICS HX-12 
TAXAN RGB VISION 420 
ZENITH ZVM 122A AMBER NON-GLARE 
ZENITH ZVM 123A GREEN NON GLARE 


printers: 


BROTHER DAISYWHEEL 

HR-16 SER OR PAR 17 CPS $366 

HR 26 SER OR PAR 23 CPS $626 

HR-36 SER OR PAR 36 CPS $849 

BROTHER DOT MATRIX 

2024L 24 PIN HEAD. GRAPHICS $926 

BROTHER Ml009 60 CPS 6LBS. $196 

EPSON ALL MODELS 8. ACCESSORIES CALL 
OKIDATA ALL MODELS 8. ACCESSORIES CALL 
TALLY MT160L 160 CPS s or p $660 

.. DRIVES • 

WE SERVICE FLOPPY DRIVES 

5’/«" OR 8" + PARTS + SHIP. $45 




TAPE BACK-UP 


IDXCS-100T 17 6Mb/S 100 BUS 
IDS-412 SCSI/SASI 17 6Mb 
PC-QICTAPE 60Mb/IBM-PC 


$1,949 

$1,949 

$1,949 


ii^>i Amcodyne 

ARAPAHOE 8 SMD 26Mb FIX & REMOV $3,996 
OPTIONAL FAN $69 POWER SUPPLY $289 

MITSUBISHI ELECTRONICS 

♦ 4851 Vi HT 5V«" 48TPI $159 

4853 V 2 HT 5V4 96TPI $179 

M2894 STD 8 DSDD $399 

M2896 Vi HI 8 DSDD $399 

142 DSDD 5V«'"Vi HI 9 149 

242 DSDD 8'"Vi HI $359 

842 DSDD 8 STD HI $449 

SANYO 6 V 4 " ViHT FLPY $119 


Qume 


k LITE 


STAND BY POWER 


BC-426-FC 426 WATTS 4 OUTLETS $469 

BC 1000 FC 1000 WATTS 4 OUTLETS $1,949 

ISOBAR SUPPRESSOR 
& NOISE FILTERS: 

IBAR 2 6 2 OUTLETS & 6 FT CORD $40 

IBAR 4-6 4 OUTLETS 8. 6 FT CORD $65 

IBAR 8 16 8 OUTLETS & 16 FT. CORD $69 

^^3^3 PC W/266K. FLPY & 

_E_ L 1 ' 10Mb H.D. $2,330 

64K RAM 4164-150 NS 
9 CHIPS/SET $24 

256K RAMS @ 150nS $14.50 

8087 3 MATH CO-PROCES. $130 

FORTRON 140 watt IBM-PC P/S $155 

HARD DISK SUBSYSTEMS: 

12Mb RQDIME PC INSIDER $719 
27Mb RpDIME PC OUTSIDER $1,375 

42Mb ounnTum PC OUTSIDER $1,815 
52Mb MICROPOLIS PC OUTSIDER $2,250 

85Mb Mqp^or PC OUTSIDER $2,795 

105Mb M^^or PC OUTSIDER $3,695 

140M b AAcgf^OV" PC OUTSIDER $4,495 

WANGTEK PC 36 60Mb TAPE BACK UP 

PC INTERNAL SUBSYSTEM $1,525 

PC EXTERNAL SUBSYSTEM $1,625 


QUARTER BYTE 266K 
RIO PLUS II 256K 
GRAPHIC PLUS II W/PARALLEL 
SUPER RIO 266K 
RIO GRANDE 128K/IBM AT 

TEGVMRi 

IBM AT/MAESTRO W/O RAM TO 2.1Mb 
S&P PORT TREASURE CHEST 
PRINTER & MEM DISK SOFTWARE $399 

CAPTAIN OK. IS. IP. CLK/CAL $219 

WAVE -XT' MEMORY BD 64K $189 

GRAPHICS MASTER - HIGH RES. COLOR $439 

GRAPHICS TENDER MONOCHROME $199 

jr CADET 266K ADD ON PIGGYBACK BD $249 

Mac Drive 

73020 2X 5Mb REMOVABLE H.D. $2,429 

73200 10Mb FIXED H.D $1,469 

73210 10Mb FIXED W/ 6Mb $2,429 

M 

COGiltronix SWITCH BOXES 

DO 

FOR NETWORKING MULTIPLE PRT S, MODEMS 
TERMINALS 8./OR SYSTEMS BY MANUAL 
OR AUTO WITH SOFTWARE CONTROL CALL 


data 

systems 


Ian 100 2 6 Vi' DSDD 


Z-150 PC THE MOST COMPATIBLE PC 
Z-150 PC (W/ 10 6Mb H.D.) 


$2,096 

$ 2,888 ^ 


If 


ULL DEALER SUPPORT 
ISIT OUR SHOWROOM 
r«. 8:30AM - 5:00PM M-F 


AJI merchandise new We accept MC. Vim. Wires, COD ($5 min fee) with 
Cashiers Check/MO. P.O.'s from qualified firms APO accepted Shipping 
minimum $4 first 3 Lbs Tax AZ Res Only add 6% sales tax All returns 
subject to 20% restocking fee Advertised prices for Mail Order Only Retail 
prices slightly higher Pnces subject to change 

Inquiry 271 for Dealers. 

Inquiry 272 for End Users. 


SEND $2.00 FOR OUR 116 PG. CATALOG 






































wabasK 

When it comes to 
Flexible Disks, nobody 
does it better than 
Wabash. 


MasterCard, Visa Accepted 
Call Free: (800) 235-4137 


PACIFIC 

EXCHANGES 

100 Foothill Blvd 
San Luis Obispo. CA 
93401 (In Cal call 
(805) 543-1037) 



Inquiry 244 


Erases Most Eproms 
in 3 Minutes ^ 





Timer Version . $54.95 


For all 24 or 28 Pin Devices 

90-DAY WARRANTEE DEALER INQUIRIES 

WELCOME 

SHIPPING & HANDLING 
$2 50 

WILLING CO. a 1d r E s ^ e t n a t x s 

4401 S JUNIPER • TEMPE. A2 85282 • (602) 838-1277 


Inquiry 328 


3M Diskettes 
Lifetime Warranty 


Think you're getting the best price 
on 3M Diskettes? 

You're right . . . BUT ONLY IF . . . 
You're buying from 
NORTH HILLS CORP. 

We will beat any nationally adver¬ 
tised price* or give you a 15 disk 
library case FREE! 

Call us last—TOLL FREE—for our 
best shot every time. 

1 - 800 - 328-3472 

Formatted and hard sectored disks in 
stock. 

Dealer inquiries invited. COD's and charge cards 
accepted. All orders shipped from stock within 24 
hours. Why wait 10 days to be shipped? 

aAa w 

North Hills Corporation 

3564 Rolling View Dr 
White Bear Lake, MN 55110 
MN Call Collect 1 612 770 0485 
‘verifiable; same product, same quantities 


Inquiry 234 



Convert What You Have 
To What You Want! 

* RS232 Serial * Centronics Parallel 

‘ 8 Baud Rates * Handshake Signals 

• Latched Outputs * Compact 3y. x x m 


No longer will your peripheral choices be limited by the type 
of port you have available! Our new High Performance 700 
Series Converters provide the missing link Based on the 
latest in CMOS technology, these units feature full baud 
rate selection to 19.2K, with handshake signals to maximize 
transfer efficiency. Detailed documentation allows 
simplified installation Order the Model 770 (Ser/Par) or 
Model 775 (Par/Ser) Today! 


Butter Products 
Coming Soon! 

2734-C Johnson Dr. UPS Shipping *3 00 
Post Ottice Box 3717 
Ventura. California 93006 


iizjEr Tiro rues 


only 0*7. 


CALL (805) 658-7466 or 658-7467 
& For FAST Delivery I 


Inquiry 106 



itls insured? 


SAFEWARE Insurance provides full 
replacement of hardware, media and 
purchased software. As little as $35/yr covers: 

• Fire • Theft • Power Surges 
• Earthquake • Water Damage • Auto Accident 

For information or immediate coverage call: 

1 - 800 - 848-3469 

In Ohio call (614) 262 -0559 

(SiffSHlE) 

SAFEWARE. THE INSURANCE AGENCY INC. 


Inquiry 273 


mi mflRYmfic INDUSTRIES INC 

800-231-3680 

Radio Shack TRS-80’s 
Epson Printers 

People you Trust to give you the very best! 




• Lowest 
Price 

• Reliable 
Service 

• Quality 
Products 


22511 Katv Fwy ., Katy (Houston) Texas 77450 
(713)392-0747 Telex 774132 


Inquiry 199 


DUST 

COVERS 

For Personal Computers and Small 
Business Systems, Peripherals, Game 
Units - Protective, Long-Lasting Vinyl 
Resists Both Dust and Liquids, 

-CHOICE OF COLORS - 

Amdek Franklin Ace 

Apple IBM 

Atari Kaypro 

BMC Okidata 

Columbia Rana Systems 

Commodore Star Micronics 

Corona Televideo 

Eagle Texas Instruments 

Epson PLUS OTHERS 


The Statistician | 


CPM IBM-PC 
TRS-DOS XENIX 


* Multiple Regression * Survey Research 

Stepwise * Nonparametrics 

Ridge * X-Y Plots , 

All Subsets * ANOVA 

Backward Elimination * Random Samples 

* Time Series Analysis * Data Base \ 

* Descriptive Statistics * Search & sort 

* Transformations * Hypothesis tests 

Please call TOLL FREE i 

1-800-334-0854 (Ext. 814) 

GROUP/VOLUME DISCOUNTS AVAILABLE 


for more information 

FOR FREE BROCHURE WRITE: 

ENCHANTED FOREST 

P.O. Box 5261, Newport Beach. CA 92662 
(118 Onyx) 

Dealer Inquiries Invited 


or write 

Box 628 

Charleston. SC 29402 
VISA-M/C Accepted 

Inquiry 105 for Dealers. 


Inquiry 263 


stSck MODEMS ’X 

★ Hayes Compatible ★ 

★ Free Communications Software ★ 

HAYES 12(H) *$449 

U.S ROBOTICS. Password 

300/1200 Auto A/D w/cables, spkr *$314 

ANCHOR AUTOMATION SIGNALMAN 

Mark I 300 Baud $ 69 

Mark X 300 Baud Auto A/D *$119 

Mark XII 1200/300 Auto A/D ★$239 

QUBIE* 

Internal 300/1200 Auto A/D ★$269 

External 300/1200 Auto A/D ★$289 

DIRECT CONNECT DEVICES 

P.O. Box 13256. San Luis Obispo, CA 93406 

CALL TO 
ORDER: 
(805) 543-6308 

Dealer Inquiries Invited 


Inquiry 89 










































REMEX 

5 Vi" 40 TRACK 
DOUDLE SIDED/DENSITY 
Vo-HEIGHT FLOPPY DRIVES 

Tested up to 2mS Track-to-Track Access 

EACH 2-9 10+ 

$59m 95 $49 EACH $45 EACH 

BRAND NEW - IN FACTORY CARTONS! 

BNRMX523 (Sh. wt 4 lbs. each) 

Single & Dual %-Height Floppy Drive Cabinets 

BNJMR123 Single-Drive Cabinet (5 lbs.) $ 65.00 
BNJMR223 Dual-Drive Cabinet (7 lbs.) $ 99.00 



5Mbyte 

Hard Disk Drive 
SHUGART 604 


ST506 Compatible - In Factory Cartons 
60 DAY WARRANTY! 

EACH 2-9 10+ 

$199 $189* $175* 

BNSHU604 (Sh. wt 9 lbs.) 

Single & Dual 5%" Hard Disk Drive Cabinets 

BNIIIHD5001 Single Drive Cabinet (16 lbs.) $ 239.00 
BNJMRHDC52 Dual Drive Cabinet (20 lbs.) $ 299.00 


COMPUTER SYSTEMS 

MORROW DESIGNS 


64K RAM expansion for IBM PC' 
contains 9-4164's 


BNP0BIBMMEM9 $ 3900 


QUADRAM CARDS (2 lbs. each) 


EXPAN0E0 0UADB0ARD (0 K) 
0UADB0AR0 II 
0UADC0L0R r 
QUADC0L0R 1 P 
QUAD 512 (64 K installed) 
0UA0LINK 

Serial int card 1-RS232 
Serial expanson tor above 
Parallel card 


BNQDRQ0BRDXP0 

BNQDRQDBRDIIO 

BNQDRQDCLRI 

BNODRQDCLRII 

BN0DRQ0512+ 

BNQDRQDLINK 

BNQDRRS232 

BNQDRRS232EXP 

BNQDRIPIC 


VIDEO MONITORS 


SANYO 12MHz 12" Amber 18 lbs 
SANYO 18MHz 12" Green 24 lbs 
SANYO 18MHz 12" Amber 24 lbs 
TAXAN 18MHz 12" Green 18 lbs 
TAXAN 18MHz 12" Amber 18 lbs 
SANYO 13" RGB color 7MHz 30 lbs 
TAXAN 12 RGB color 6 MHz 50 lbs 


BNSYODM2212 
BNSY0DM8112CX 
BNSY0DM8212CX 
BNTAX115 
BNTAX116 
BNSYOOM7500 
BNTAX210 


DISKETTES ond ACCESSORIES 

MAXELL 

8” dbl/dens single sided 11b BMMXLFD1128M1200 S 2750 

8" dbt/dens double sided 11b BMMXIFD2XDM1200 S 34 95 


PRINTERS 


S-100 CPU BOARDS 

Shvpng weight on all S-100 bowds 2lbs each 


Micro DeciS«nw5Mbylehrddish&terminlBNPDBNDSMD5 $1999 00 
BastcBO SuperCaic. Personal-Pearl and BNMDSMD11S0FT $ 35000 
Pilot software for M05 above 

SANYO 

MBC550-2 MS-DOS 1 dtX/sd drive sys- BNPDBSY0999 $ 99900 
tern w/Gm screen monitor & 80cps printer 

I DM PC“ COMPATIBLE ADD-ONs 

Franklin Hard Dbks with Controllers 

10MB Internal 10 lbs BNFTCHDI10 $ 74900 

10MB External 18 lbs BNFTCHDX10 $ 89500 

10MB Internal'r-Height 8 lbs BNFTCI10HH $ 749 00 

20MB internal ’ ;-He.ght 8 lbs BNFTCI20HH $1195 00 

15MB internal 10 lbs BNFTCHDI15 $ 995 00 

15MB External 18 lbs BNFTCHDX15 $109500 

33MB internal 12 lbs BNFTCHDI33 $1895 00 

33MB External 20 lbs BNFTCHDX33 $209500 

10MB Streaming Tape Internal 10 lbs BNFTCTI10 $ 79500 

10MB Streaming Tape External 18 lbs BNFTCTE10 S 895 00 

10MB Tape 4 20MB disk Ext 25 lbs BNFTCF20T $1995 00 


RX80 20lbs 
RX80FT 20lbs 
RX100 26lbs 
FX80 20 lbs 
FX100 26 lbs 
LQ1500 Ser int 30cps 
LQ1500 Par ml 30cps 


EPSON 

BNEPNRX80+ $ 23900 
BNEPNRX80FT+ $ 27900 
BNEPNRX100+ $ 42900 
BNEPNFX80+ $ 39900 
BNEPNFX100+ $ 59900 
BNPDBEPNLQ1500SS124900 
BNPDBEPNLQ1500P$1199 00 


OKIDATA 

82A w/tractor feed 25 lbs 8N0KIDAT82AT $ 349 00 

83A w/tractor feed 35 lbs BN0KIDAT83AT $ 58900 

84A - parallel 35 lbs BN0KIDAT84AP $ 89500 

84A - serial 35 lbs BN0KIDAT84AS $ 97900 

92A • parallel 25 lbs BN0KI0AT92AP $ 46900 

92A - serial 25 lbs BN0KIDAT92AS $ 61000 

93A - parallel 35 lbs BN0KIDAT93AP $ 69900 

93A - serial 35 lbs BN0KIDAT93AS $ 925 00 

MANNESMANN TALLY 

MT160L 80 cd 21 lbs BNTALMT160L $ 57500 

MT180L 132 col 28 lbs BNTALMT180L $ 799 00 


PI 340 serial 30lbs 
PI 340 parallel 30 bs 
PI 351 parallel 35bs 
Bidirectionl tractor tor PI 351 6lbs 
Single bin cut sheet feeder 
for PI 351 15lbs 

STAR 

Gemm 10X 20 lbs 

Gemini 10X for IBM PC 20 lbs' 

Gemini 15X 26 lbs 

Gemini 15X for IBM PC’* 26 lbs 

Serial interlace for GEMINI X senes 

Serial interface with 4K buffer 

C0EX80FT parallel 2libs 


BNTSHP1340S $ 699 00 
BNTSHP1340P $ 69900 
BNTSHP1351P $1299 00 
BNTSHA04003 $ 195.00 
BNTSHA05002 $ 99500 


BNSTRGEM10X S 259.00 
BNSTRGEM10XPC $ 329.00 
BNSTRGEM15X $ 379.00 
BNSTRGEM15XPC $ 449.00 
BNSTRSERINTX $ 5900 
BNSTRSERINTX4KS 119.00 
BNC0X80FT $ 17900 


MACROTECH 80286 & Z80 
CompuPro CPU-2 

CompuPro 8085/88 dual processor 
SOS SBC-300 4MHz 
SOS SBC-300 6MHz 
ADVANCED DIGITAL SuperSix w/floppy 
controller. 128K RAM 
ADVANCED DIGITAL 4MHz SBC 5V 
floppy controller. 64K RAM 
ADVANCED DIGITAL 4MHz SBC. 8" 
floppy controller. 64 K RAM 


BNMACM1286 $1395 00 
BNGBTA039 $ 26900 
BNGBTA041 $ 399 00 
BNSDS38095 $ 59900 
BNSDS38092 $ 699 00 
BNADCSUP6128 $ 69900 

BNA0CSBC15 $ 59500 

BNADCSBC18 $ 595.00 


S-100 RAM BOARDS 


PRINTER DUFFERS 


64K Microbuffer (serial) 2lbs BNPRPMB1S64 $ 24900 

64K Microbuffer (parallel) 2lbs BNPRPMB1P64 $ 24900 

MicioOuffer 11+ lor Apple (serial) 2lbs BMPRPMB2PLUS16S $189.00 
Microbuffer H+ for Apple (parallel) 2lbs BMPRPMB2PLUS16P$18900 


64K RAM expansion for IBM PC' BNPDBIBMMEM9 $ 3900 

contains 9-4164 s 1 lb 

256K Dynamic RAM chips 150ns BNHM50256P15 $ 3000 

8 or more $19 95 each 

I DM Af“ Compatible Hard Disk Drive 

1 2Mbyte 'iheight w/hrdware 5lbs BNIIIATFDD $ 39500 

20Mbyte hrd dsk formattd SEAGATE 5lbsBNSEAST225F $ 895 00 
33Mbyte hrd dsk formattd QUANTUM 9lbsBNQTMQ540F $1595.00 

VIDEO CARDS 

IBM color video card 2lbs BNIBM1504910 $ 25000 

IBM Monochrome Card 2lbs BNIBM1504900 $ 25000 

IDM-PC" COMPATIBLE MONITORS 

IBM 12 green screen I8lbs BNIBM5151001 $ 27500 

TAXAN 12 green screen lor IBM 18IDS BNTAX121 $ 16900 

TAXAN 12 amber screen lor IBM 18lbs BNTAX122 $ 17900 

IBM 13" color RGB 28lbs BNIBM5153001 $ 680 00 

TAXAN 12" color RGB w/cable 28lbs BNTAXRGB420 $ 49500 

STD CARDS (2 lbs each) 

Super RIO (64K) BNSTBSRIO $31900 

Super I/O BNSTSI0 $ 19900 

RIO PLUS (64 K) BNSTBRI0PLS $ 28900 

Graphic PLUS II BNSTBGRPLS2 $ 395 00 

RIO GRANDE AT* Multifunction 128KBNSTBRGB128 $ 44900 
GRANDE BYTE 128K Exp to 2MB AT" BNSTBGB128 $ 29900 
TECMAR DO ARDS 

The CAPTAIN' Multi board 64K BNTECCAPTAIN $ 25900 

256K Dynamic memory BNTEC256KDM $21900 

WAVE' XT Memory board BNTECWAVE $21900 

GRAPHICS MASTER' BNTECGRMSTR $ 49900 

EXPANSION CHASSIS lor IBM PC' 8slotBNTECEXPCHS $ 749 00 
HERCULES GRAPHICS CARDS 
High res monochrome card BNHECGC $ 33900 

Color card with printer port 8NHECC0L0R $ 179 00 


PROMETHEUS 

PioModem 1200 baud auto dial/ans 4 ibsBNPRMPMl200 $349 00 
ProModem IBM-PC' card w/software BNPRMPM1200B $28900 
ProModem Apple II card w/software BNPRMPM1200A $34 9 00 
ProModem tor Macxitosh w/cable & software BNPRMPM1200M $399 00 

Alpha/num display tor ProModem BNPRMDISPLAY $ 7900 

Options processor for ProModem BNPRM0PTPR0 S 7900 

64K Memory exp. for options processor BNPDBPRMEXP64 $ 59.00 


MODEMS 

HAYES 

1200 Baud Smart modem 4 lbs BNDCH0400P $ 47900 

1200 Baud lor IBM-PC' w/software BNDCH1200B $ 429.00 

300 Baud Smarlmodem BNDCH0200P $ 249.00 

Micromodem II for Apple BNDCH701400 $ 24900 


5» Double Sided 

—-tW5£?i 

BN5DS25 1$' 60 * per pacW 


S-lOO CONTROLLER BOARDS 

FOR FLOPPY DISKS 


(Sh wt 1 


S H 40 each inBoxes°* z , 50 


CompuPro DISKI DMA 
CompuPro DISKI A DMA 
SDS Versa Floppy II with CP/M 30' 
(a special implementation by SDS) 
SDS VersaFloppy III 

with 5V unbanked CP/M 3.0' 
with 8 unbanked CP/M 3 O' 
with 5V." banked CP/M 3.0' 
with 8 banked CP/M 3.0” 


BNGBT54018 $ 39900 
BNGBTA084 $ 549 00 
BNP0BVF2CPM3 $ 29900 

BNSDS38099 $ 59900 
BNPDBVF339145 $ 74900 
BNPDBVF339146 $ 74900 
BNPDBVF339147 $ 74900 
BNPDBVF339148 $ 749 00 


FOR HARD DISK 


i These 


prices are so lew, the 


DISK DRIVES 


$ 23900 
$ 22900 
$ 21900 
$ 44900 
$ 25900 
$ 53900 
$ 8900 
$ 4000 
$ 8900 


$ 7900 
$ 12900 
$ 12900 
$ 13900 
$ 13900 
$ 37900 
$ 31900 


fl DRIVES 


SIEMENS Single side dbl/density 18lbs BNSIEFDD1008 $ 12500 
2 to 5 Drives $110.00 each / 6 or more Drives $99 00 each 
WORLD DISK DRIVES Double side BNWDD2008P $ 21900 
dbl/density 18lbs 2 to 5 Drives $19900 each 

6 or more Drives $18900 each 

MITSUBISHI dbl side dtX dens 18lbs BNMITM289463B $ 37500 
TAN00N Vi height sgl side, dbl dens 9lbsBNTN0TM8481 E $ 31900 
TAND0N Vi height dbl side, dbl dens 9lbsBNTNDTM8482E $ 38900 


5 Vi" DRIVES 

SHUGART 40trk Vi height dbl side 3lbs BNSHUSA455 $ 149.00 

TEAC 48tpi Vi height dbl side 3lbs BNTEA55B $ 155.00 

TEAC 96tp» Vi height dbl side 3lbs BN TEA55F $ 16900 

TANDON 100-2 40trk Ml height BNTNDTM1002 $ 199 00 

dbl side 4ibs 

5 Vi" HARD DISK 

QUANTUM 42Mbyte Hard disk 9lbs BNQTMQ540 $1495.00 
TAND0N 192Mbyte Hrd Disk BNTND503 $ 895 00 

Seagate ST225 Vi high 25 Mbyte 5lbs BNSEAST225 $ 79500 
MAXTOR 85Mbyte 30ms access 12lbs BNMXTXT1085 $2995 00 
MAXTOR 140Mbyte 30msaccess 12lbs BNMXTXT1140 $399500 
MICROPOLIS 52 Mbyte 12 lbs BNMCP1304 $1695.00 


CompuPro DISK3 Seagate ST500 series BNGBTA087 $ 55895 
ADVANCED 0IGITAL Seagate 500 BNAOCHDC10015 $ 39900 
compatible 


DISK DRIVE ENCLOSURES 

6" ENCLOSURES 


ParaDynamics dual desktop 35lbs BNPDN2200D 

ParaDynamics dual rack mount 35lbs BNPDN2200R 

JMR Dual desktop 30lbs BNJMR2C8 

5 Vi" ENCLOSURES 

JMR Single 5lbs BNJMR1C5 

JMR Dual full height 9lbs BNJMR2C5 

JMR Dual full height w/internal data BNJMR2C5C 

cable 9lbs 

JMR Dual half height vert mount 7lbs BNJMR2SV5 
JMR Single hard disk enclosure 16lb& BNJMRHDC51 
JMR Dual hard disk enclosure 20lbs BNJMRHDC52 


$ 47900 
$ 49900 
$ 22900 


$ 6500 
$ 239 00 
$ 29900 




9161 Deering Ave., 

PRIORITY 



Chatsworth, Calif. 

ELECTRONICS 


ORDER TOLL FREE (OOO) 420-5922 - CA, AK HI CALL (816) 709-5111 

qHiPPiilr rHA P Nm IMP 0 f JhT ^ , M f n BAC ' Ch6CK Money 0rder US Funds 0NLY CA residents a ^ 6 ’ /2 % Sales Tax. Include MINIMUM 

SHIPPING & HANDLING of $3 00 for the first 3 lbs., plus 40C for each additional pound (20C if within California). Orders over 70 lbs. sent freight collect Just in 
case, include your phone number Prices subject to change without notice. We will do our best to maintain prices through February, 1985. Credit card orders will be 
charged appropriate freight We are not responsible for typographical errors Sale prices are for prepaid orders only. Inquiry 334 


CompuPro RAM23 / 64 K 

BNGBTA316 

$ 34900 


CompuPro RAM 23 / 128K 

BNGBTA319 

$ 599 00 

1 ■ 

SOS ExpandoRAM 111/696 

BNS0S38097 

$ 49900 

■ 

SDS ExpandoRAM IV 

BNSDS38088 

$ 825.00 


MACROTECH 1 Megabyte 

BNMACMAXM 

$2195.00 

■■■ 

CompuPro RAM 22 / 256K 

BNGBTA070 

$119900 


S-IOO RAM DISK BOARDS 


CompuPro M-Drive/H* 512K 

BNGBTA072 

$ 899 00 

— - 

SDS RAM disk 256K 

BNSDS38082 

$ 649 00 


S-IOO I/O BOARDS 



Vector Interfacer II 

BNVCT8B00GF2B $ 2590U 

"" ~ 

CompuPro Interfacer 3 

BNGBTA078 

$ 599.00 

■ — 

CompuPro Interfacer 4 

BNGBTA080 

$ 34900 


CompuPro System Support 1 

BNGBTA103 

$ 35000 


SOS 4 port Async serial 

BNS0S38096 

$ 44900 

- 

SOS 8 port Async serial 

BNSDS38093 

$ 52900 

E^=E 

SDS 8 port 4-Async 4-sync 

BNSDS38094 

$ 649 00 



ORDER TOLL FREE (800) 420-5922 - CA, AK, HI CALL (818) 709-5111 











































USED 

SOFTWARE 


•••/ LOW PRICES !••• 


WE BUY AND SELL USED SOFTWARE 
ALL MAKES OF COMPUTERS 
SUPPORTED 

FREE CATALOG 

SOFTWARE 

EXCHANGE 

INC. 

BOX 485, 

HALES CORNERS, Wl. 
53130 


Inquiry 285 


EPROM 

PROGRAMMER 




APPROTEK 1000 

ONLY 

$ 249.95 

COMPLETE WITH 
PERSONALITY 
MODULE 
117 AC POWER-RS232 
-6 BAUD RATES - HANDSHAKE TO HOST 
ALLOWS READ. WRITE. VERIFY & COPY 
Comes complete with CPM & BASIC Driver 
Program Listings for most small micros 

Full 1 Year Warranty 

Programs the following 5 Volt 24 or 28 pm 
devices 2 7xx senes through 27256. 

25xx senes, 68766 plus others 

Specify Personality Module desired with order 

Additional Personality Modules only $ 1 5 00 ea 

TO ORDER: CALL OR WRITE 

APROPOS TECHNOLOGY 

1071-A AVENIDA ACASO Add 

CAMARILLO, CA 93010 $4.00 Shlpplng-USA 

(8061 482-3604 VISA or MC Add 3% 


Inquiry 24 



PROMPT DELIVERY!!! 

S SAME DAY SHIPPING (USUALLY) 


OUTSIDE OKLAHOMA: NO SALES TAX 


8087-3 

Co-Processors 1 

$124.97^ 


DYNAMIC RAM 


256K 

256Kx1 

150 ns 

$13.47 

128K 

128Kx1 

150 ns 

16.25 

64K 

64Kx1 

150 ns 

2.44 

64K 

64Kx1 

200 ns 

2.59 


EPROM 


27256 

32Kx8 

300 ns 

$36.25 

27128 

16Kx8 

250 ns 

13.12 

27C64 

8Kx8 

200 ns 

11.87 

2764 

8Kx8 

250 ns 

5.31 

2732A 

4Kx8 

250 ns 

5.99 

2716 

2Kx8 

450 ns 

3.21 


STATIC RAM 

6264LP-15 8Kx8 150 ns $18.75 
6116P-3 2 Kx 8 150 ns 4.06, 


OPEN 6V 2 DAYS: WE CAN SHIP VIA FED-EX ON SAT 


MasterCard VISA or UPS CASH COD 

Factory New, Prime Parts juPor> 

MICROPROCESSORS UNLIMITED 

24.000 South Peoria Ave /Q1Q\ 0fi7_4Qfi1 
BEGGS. OK 74421 ™ 1 

Price# shown above are for January 7, 1985 

I current pncae Pncw subject to change Please expeci higher or lowec pncw cw 

some parts due to supply A demand and our changing costs Shipping A insurance extra Cast 
I Recount pncee shown Smat orders received by 6 PM CST can usually be delivered to you by 
1 “-- • " *-- ‘ * Atf (o $6,751 



LBASF 

DISKETTES 


BASF Diskettes at compe¬ 
titive price. Call TOLL FREE 
(800) 235-4137 for prices and 
information. Visa and Master 


100 Foothill Blvd 
San Luis Obispo CA 
93401 (In Cal call 
(805) 543-1037 i 


Card accepted. 


41 TeleVideo USERS 

RETAIL 

• Fast Dump/Restore CP/M, TurboDOS 


over 600k per disk. S90.00 

• Basic/Z with Graph/Z $345.00 

• TurboDOS for TeleVideo from $300.00 

• LYNC Communications Package $195.00 

• 8" Disk Drive for 802 and 800A 

Drive, board and software $1200.00 

• RM/C0B0L Systems from $250.00 

• DataFlex 2.0. from $750.00 

• 803, 803H. TPC-1 and GRAPHIC programs: 

Draw! $90.00 

Games Pak I $34.95 

• 816 and 806C Tape Backup from $175.00 

• Saft Standby Power Systems: 

200VA/400VA.from $575.00 

• Anti-Static Products from $39.95 


PC & COMPATIBLE USERS! 

Run your PC as a slave to your 8-Bit 
TurboDOS System! Also see our ad on Page 459 
Available soon: Backup for TELEVIDEO PM & 1608. 

PLUS OTHER GOOD TELEVIDEO & PC STUFF! 

COGITATE, INCORPORATED 

SPECIALISTS IN UNIQUE SOFTWARE 

24000 Telegraph Road, Southfield, Ml 48034 
(313) 352-2345 Telex 386581 

VISA/MASTERCARD Accepted 


Inquiry 362 



■ji ROSE 

,T^ ELECTRONICS 


DATA SWITCHES 


SHARE computers, printers, 
any parallel or serial device 
ELIMINATE cable swapping 
INEXPENSIVE way to network 
COMPATIBLE with 
all computers 

Businesses, Schools, Homes 
WE ALSO OFFER 
Data Buffers, Line Drivers, 
Modems. Protocol Converters. 
Parallel - Serial Converters, 
Cables, Computers, Printers, 
Disk Drives, and more. 


AUTOMATIC - CARETAKER is ideal for a business or 
school to share a printer or modem among many computers 
Operation is fully automatic with no software required 
Parallel or Serial 4 channels - $295 8 channels - $395 


MANUAL HARDSWITCH is operated with the flip of a 
switch 2:2 and 2 4 models allow simultaneous commun¬ 
ication 

Serial 1:2-$59 1:4-$ 99 2:2 -$109 2:4 - $169 

Parallel 1:2 - $99 1 4 - $159 2:2-$189 2:4 - $279 

LED and spike protection on serial models add $20 
CODE ACTIVATED PORTER connects one computer to 
multiple peripherals A software code selects the peripheral 
Parallel or Serial 4 channels - $295 8 channels - $395 

Buffer option 64K - $100 256K - $250 

REMOTE TELEPATH connects multiple computers to 
multiple peripherals A selector at each computer or terminal 
chooses up to 4 peripherals and displays busy status 
4 4 $495 4:8 - $795 selector - $39 

= (five rt Ca c ampute i - — - - - 

ROSE ELECTRONICS (713) 240-7673 

P.0 BOX 742571 MC & VISA Accepted 

HOUSTON, TX 77274 Dealer Inquiries Invited 

CALL US FOR ALL YOUR INTERFACE NEEDS 


Inquiry 215 


Inquiry 244 


Inquiry 363 


Turbo + PC Tools = Programs 

Tools for Turbo PascalTM on the IBMTM pc 

Window Management = menus, Kelp files 

• Unlimited windows • Window overlay & recall 

• Cursor save & jump • Access all colors & chars 

• Window Compiler/Librarian manages window files 

Graphics Drawing = HiRes plotting power! 

• Ellipses, polygons • Region fill and clear 
& more 

String Formula Evaluator = easy calculation 

• 22 functions with nesting and implicit 
multiplication 

• Won’t bomb on overflow or division by zero 

System Check and Control = max flexibility! 

• Time & date access • Get disk types & room 

• Get & set default • 1/0 information 
drive 

All this for only $39.95* . Incredible! 

You get 321K of source code on a double-sided disk 
and a 35 page manual. For single-sided drives add 
$2. Works with DOS 2.0, Turbo 2.0. 

•Please include $2 for postage and handling ($4 if 
outside of USA). Californians add 6%. 

Paragon Courseware 

4954 Sun Valley Road 
Del Mar, CA 92014 
(619) 481-1477 

Turbo Pascal is a trademark of Borland International 
IBM is a trademark of the IBM Corporation 



Connects via RS-232. Built-in BASIC. 
Stand alone capability. Expandable. 
Battery Option. Basic system: 16 ch. 
12 bit A/D, 2 ch. D/A, 32 bit Digital I/O. 
Expansion boards available. Direct 
Bus units for many computers. 

SPECIALISTS IN PORTABLE APPLICATIONS 

(201) 299-1615 

PO. Box 246, Morris Plains, NJ 07950 


DATA ACQUISITION TO GO 

WTERFACE FOR ANY COMPUTER 


Inquiry 245 


Inquiry 180 


Electronic 

Circuit 

Analysis 

• New release 

• Transient, AC, DC analysis 

• Full nonlinear 

• Over 200 nodes 

• Full editing 

• Macro circuits 

• Worst case, Monte-Carlo 

• Temperature effects 

• Frequency dependent parts 

• Time dependent parts 

For MS-DOS. 128k minimum. 

$395.00 

Tatum Labs 
P.O. Box 698 
Sandy Hook, CT 06482 
(203) 426-2184 


Inquiry 364 








































Nslhat’s Neiv at 

AMERICAN DESIGN COMPONENTS? 


“The Source” of 
electro-mechanical components 
for the hobbyist. 


INTEGRATED CIRCUITS 

To order, please list on separate 

sheet of paper and attach to 

coupon. 


Description 

Price 

Microprocessor 


COP402N 

$ 4.50 

64CI0N 

5.00 

6800 

2.50 

68A09P 

3.50 

MCM6810P 

.80 

68A21P 

1.25 

68A45 

3.75 

SY6521A/SY68B21 

1.75 

IPC16A-520D 

9.00 

D780C 

2.50 

P8088 

12.00 

P8216N 

1.25 

INS8250AN 

6.00 

8253-5 

4.50 

8255A 

4.50 

P-8255A-5 

4.50 

8259A 

3.25 

8279-5 

4.50 

C8751H 

125.00 

MB8877AP-6 

20.00 

Memory 


2102L2PC 

$ 1.00 

SY2128-4 

3.50 

2148 

3.50 

2167 

14.00 

2764 

5.50 

2716 

2.50 

TMS4116 

.90 

4164-15 

4.00 

IM65X51IJF 

3.75 

HM3-6518B-9 

2.00 

N82S147N 

5.00 


W e warehouse 
60,000 items at 
American Design Compo¬ 
nents—expensive, often 
hard-to-find components 
for sale at a fraction of 
their original cost! 

You’ll find every part 
you need—either brand 
new, or removed from 
equipment (RFE) in excel¬ 
lent condition. But quanti¬ 
ties are limited. Order 
from this ad, or visit our 
retail showroom and find 
exactly what you need 
from the thousands of 
items on display. Open 
Mon.-Sat., 9-5. 


THERE’S NO RISK. 

With our full 30 day warranty, 
any purchase can be returned for 
any reason for full credit or refund. 


A. APPLE 2c DISC 
DRIVE 



Original equipment drive, 
compatible with Apple 2e, 

2 + , and 2c. 

$139.50 RFE 


B. 115 CFM MUFFIN- 
FAN 



Metal frame 
with 5 high 
impact plastic blades. For 
cooling HiFi, electronic 
equipment, computers, 
etc. Mounts for intake or 
exhaust. 115 VAC, 60Hz. 
Dim: 4 11 /ie"x1 1 /2"D. 

$7.95 RFE 


150 CFM SUPER 
MUFFIN’ FAN 


c. 


Upgrade 
your 

computer"_ 

with this faster, super 
quiet, 5 aluminum ball 
bearing blade fan. Slightly 
larger, but mounts in same 
holes as regular Muffin. 115 
VAC, 50/60 Hz. Torin 
TA500PSC. 

$19.95 NEW 



5V4" tandon disc drives 


IBM Compatible 

V2 Ht. 

D. TM55-2 

Full Ht. 

E. TM100-1 

F. TM100-2 



DS/DD $179.00 


SS/DD 99.50 
DS/DD 159.00 


DS/Quad $179.00 
DS/Quad 179.00 
DS/Quad 199.00 


K. 48 KEY 

KEYBOARD 


COMPUTER DISC DRIVE SWITCHING 
POWER SUPPLIES 




Replace the membrane keyboard 
on your Timex/Sinclair Z-81/1000 
with this brand new “big computer- 
keyboard from Texas Instruments. 
Simple to install—complete 
instructions and schematic 
included. $ 5 . 95 NEW 


L. ± 12V @1A 
+ 5V @6A 
- 5V @1A 
Dim: 9'k>" x 7” 

$29.95 NEW 


M. + 12V @.350A 
+ 5V @1.2A 
-5V@.12A 
Dim: 4Vs" x 4%" 

Input: 115VAC when used 
with AC wall transformer 
(supplied) $6.95 NEW 


N. CONSTANT VOLTAGE 
TRANSFORMER 

Protect Your Computer. 



Harmonic neutralized. 500 
VA, provides 120V/60Hz 
continuously, with input 
variations as great as ± 
15%. Input Voltage: 95-130 
or 190-260 VAC, 60 Hz. 
(accepts either voltage). 
Mfr: Sola. $ 99.00 NEW 


o. 


19 COLOR X-Y 
DISPLAY 


BLOWERS— POTENTIOMETERS—COUNTERS 
TIMERS—RELAYS—VOLTAGE REGULATORS—POWER SUPPLIES 



P. EXPAND YOUR PC STORAGE CAPACITY 



5V4" floppy disc drive. Self-contained power supply. Plus...matching 
disc drive controller. Originally used with Tl home computer. Each unit 
tested and in working condition, but sold “as is”—no warranty. 

While they last, $99.00 COMPLETE. 


12V NICAD BATTERY BACK-UPS (RECHARGEABLE) 

, <c. 



12V @450Ma. 

Contains 10 AA cells. ^—/ 
Recharge rate 45Ma, 16-18 hours. 
Case with tab output connections. 
Dim: 2Vie"H x 1VV' x 2 15 /ie"L. 

Mfr. GE #123233 or equiv. 

$5.95 RFE 



13.2V @1.65AH 
Contains 11 C cells. 
Portable computer 
battery back up. 

Mfr. GE # 41B03JBB00101 
$15.95 RFE 


Originally designed for use in 
Atari coin-operated games. 
Contains a 19VLUP22 3-gun 
color tube, focus and bright¬ 
ness controls. Has electromag¬ 
netic deflection and solid state 
circuitry with three “Z” amp 
inputs (red, green, blue). Ideal 
for arcade replacement or, with 
the addition of external cir¬ 
cuitry, for color graphics 
display. Manual included. 

$129.00 NEW 


American Design Components 


62 Joseph St.. Moonachie. NJ 07074 
(201)939-2710 


R. AUDIO & VIDEO 
MODULATOR 


Designed 

for 



AMERICAN DESIGN COMPONENTS, 62 JOSEPH STREET, MOONACHIE, N.J. 07074 


YES! Please send me the following items: 


with Tl 
computers. 

Can be 
used with 
video cameras, 
games, or other 
audio/video sources. Built 
in A/B switch enables user to switch 
from TV. antenna without disconnec¬ 
tion. Channel 3 or 4 selection. 
Operates on 12VDC. Schematic 
included. IBM and Apple compatible. 
Mfr. Tl #UMl381-1 $ 7.95 NEW 


A.B.C. 

etc. 


Many? 


Description 



Total 

Shipping and handling, we ship UPS unless 
herwise specified Add $3 plus 10% total 
Canadian: $3 plus P.P. cost Charge only. 

Sales Tax. (N.J. residents only, 
please add 6% of total) 

ORDER TOTAL 


□ My check or money order is enclosed. 

□ Charge my credit card. 

□ Visa □ Master Card 


MINIMUM 

ORDER 

$15. 

B-25 


Exp Date 


Signature 


Telephone Area Code 


City 


Zip 


All inquiries and free catalog requests call 201-939-2710. 


For all phone orders, call TOLL-FREE 800-524-0809. In New Jersey, 201-939-2710. 


Inquiry 21 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 445 

























































Technology, Inc. 


The Home of 
Remanufactured 

ICs 

offers you an 
attractive 
alternative 


No late-comer to the high tech 
business world, we perfected our 
1C remanufacturing process in 
1975 .. . and have been serving 
the needs of important, quality¬ 
conscious OEMs and distributors 
ever since. Now we are making 
available, to the serious hobby¬ 
ist','our vast inventory of ICs. 

The patented Krueger Process 
is the key to the quality or our re¬ 
manufacturing. Using patterned 
and controlled infra-red heat, we 
remove soldered-in ICs from ob¬ 
solete, over-run, or scrap PCBs. 
Then we use automated, state- 
of-the-art procedures for lead¬ 
straightening, replating, optical 
scanning, and functional testing. 
The result is ICs which are "better 
than new'' because they're al¬ 
ready burned-in and retested. 

This means that you can now buy 
just like the OEMs ... the same 
top quality, in the small quantities 
-that meet your needs ... 100% 
tested and guaranteed. Use your 
Visa or MasterCard. 

The listings on this page are but a 
sample selection from our full in¬ 
ventory. Call our toll free number 
to place your order or obtain 
information. 


EXTRA 
SPECIAL 
FEATURES 


27128 450NS 

9.95 


9/24.95 

(3.00 - EACH) 



EPROMS 


STATIC RAMS 


1702 

2 K 

2.63 

10415 

IKxl 

6.26 

5204 

4K 

2.63 

2115 

IKxl 

1.13 

2708 

8 K 

2.37 

2125 

IKxl 

1.50 

68708 

8 K 

7.50 

93415 

IKxl 

3.38 

2716 300-450NS 

16K 

2.63 

93425 

IKxl 

3.38 

2716 500-650NS 

16K 

1 88 

2510 

IKxl 

3.38 

2532, 2732 200NS 

32K 

4.20 

2511 

IKxl. 

3.38 

2532, 2732 250NS 

32K 

3.75 

2148 

1 Kx4 

3.92 

2763 

64K 

3.20 

2149 

1 Kx4 

3.92 

68766 (24 PIN) 

64K 

11.86 

10474 

1 Kx4 

3.00 

2564, 2764 300NS 

64K 

5.93 

2114 200NS 

1 Kx4 

.70 

27128 250NS 

128K 

11.95 

2114 450NS 

1 Kx4 

.50 

27128 300NS 

128K 

10.95 

4801 70NS 

1 Kx8 

3.38 




4118 250NS 

1 Kx8 

2.93 

DYNAMIC RAMS 


6116 200NS 

6116 250NS 

2Kx8 

2Kx8 

3.68 

2.93 

4164 150NS 
TMS4416 

4164 250NS 

2620 

4332 

2118 

64K 

64K 

64K 

64K 

32K 

16K 

3.00 

3.00 

2.00 

3.00 

3.00 

1.50 

10470 

2141 

2147 

TMS4044 200NS 
TMS4044 300NS 

1420 

4Kx1 

4Kx1 

4Kx1 

4Kx1 

4Kx1 

4Kx4 

10.44 

1.05 

3.38 

1.05 

90 

4.50 

4116 150NS 

4116 200NS 

16K 

16K 

89 

59 

2168 

2167 

4Kx4 

16Kx1 

4.50 

4.50 

4116 250NS 

16K 

39 




4027 

4K 

.45 

“L" Series slightly higher. 



Z80 SERIES 

2.5 MHZ 

CPU 1.13 

CTC 1.13 

DART 3.00 

DMA 3.00 

PIO 1.13 

SIO (Any) 3.00 

4.0 MHZ (Z80 A) 

CPU 188 

CTC 188 

DART 4.50 

DMA 4.50 

PIO 1 88 

SIO (Any) 4.50 

6500/6800 

MICROPROCESSORS 

6502 1.50 

6503 1 50 

6504 2.75 

6512 1.25 

6522 2.75 

6532 3.75 

6545 8.00 

6800 1.75 

6802 3.25 

6803 7.50 

6809 5.00 

6810 75 

6820 1.50 

6821 1.25 

6844 10.50 

6850 1 50 

6852 2.25 

6860 3.25 

6875 2.75 

16 BIT 

MICROPROCESSORS 


SOUND CHIPS 


DATA 

ACQUISITION 


8000 SERIES 


8155 

8741 

8748 

8202 

8205 

8212 

8214 

8216 

8224 

8226 

8228 

8237 
8237-5 

8238 
8243 
8251 
8253 
8253-5 
8255 
8255-5 
8257 
8257-5 
8259 
8259-5 
8272 
8274 
8276 
8279 
8279-5 
8284 
8286 

8287 

8288 


14.00 

3.75 

3.75 

2.25 

3.75 

7.50 
12.00 
11.25 

2.85 

18.00 

1800 

13.50 
2.25 
1.00 

2.25 
1.00 

1.50 

1.25 

2.25 

6.75 

7.50 
3.00 
5.00 

3.25 

3.50 
4.00 
3.25 

3.75 
3.50 
4.00 

3.50 
4.00 

16.00 

25.00 

17.50 
4.00 
5.00 
4.00 

4.50 
4.50 

10.00 

18.00 

5.00 


FLOPPY DISK 
CONTROLLERS 


D765 

1791 

1793 

8876 

8877 
8272 
2143 
9216 


11.25 

11.25 

11.25 

11.25 

11.25 

18.00 

5.25 

5.25 


CRT 

CONTROLLERS 


AY5-1013A 

AY3-1015A 

TR1402 

TR1602 

TR1863 

TR1472 

1482 

2350 

2651 

6402 

7201 


2.00 

3.00 

2.00 

2.25 

2.25 

4.50 

4.50 

4.50 

4.50 

3.50 
10.50 


MISCELLANEOUS 


TMS9901 

TMS9904 

TMS9914 

TMS9980 

TMS9900 

9602 

96L02 

96LS02 


1.50 

1.50 

3.00 

13.26 

3.00 

1.10 

2.25 

3.75 


VALENTINE 

SPECIAL 


NOTE: This is just a sampling of our 6 million 1C inventory. In addition to microproces¬ 
sors and memory, we carry a full inventory of linear, digital, and interface devices. 


KRUEGER Technology, Inc 

2219 South 48th Street • Tempe, AZ 85281 

= 800 - 245-2235 


In Arizona 602-438-1570 


446 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 172 












Inquiry 186 



Inquiry 291 


MEMOREX 

FLEXIBLE DISCS 


WE WILL NOT BE UNDER¬ 
SOLD!! Call Free (800)235^1137 

for prices and information. Dealer 
inquiries invited and GO.D.’s 
accepted. 



PACIFIC 

EXCHANGES 

100 Foothill Blvd 
San Luis Obispo. CA 
93401 In Cal call 
(800)592-5935 or 
,(805)543-1037 


Inquiry 244 



8085 DEBUGGER 


MICRO STEP 85 

$595 



Low cost Alternative for microprocessor based 
hardware & software debugging. 

Available now: 8085 

Z80& 8088 

DAISY DATA TERMINALS CORPORATION 

2259 Woodlawn St., Harrisburg, PA 17104 
TEL. (717)564-8811 TELEX: 752997 DAISY HBG UD 


Inquiry 361 


PC EXPANSIONS 

Qumel 42A $199 

Teac FD55B $149 

Tandon TM100-2 $179 

Tandon TM101-4 $295 

CDC9409 $179 

Amdek AmdiskV $119 

Case and PS $ 45 

Maynard Disk Controller $114 

Sandstar Series $ call 

Internal 10MB HDsystems WS1 $899 
WS2. $1079 

Quadboard h4K) $259 

Quadboard (384 K) $419 

Quadcolor I $199 

AST SixPakPlus (64K) $259 

SixPakPlus (384K) $419 

MegaPlus(64K) $269 

I/OPlus $129 

$659 
$809 
$389 
$349 
$209 
$489 
$419 
$ 32 
$ 23 
$169 
$ 49 


Plus 

AST-3780 
PCnet - starter kit 
MonoGraphPlus-S 
HERCULES graphics board 
HAYES Modems 300 
Smartmodem 1 200 
Smartmodem 1200B 
Set of 9 chips (64 K) 

256K chips (each) 

8087 chip . 

Verbatim Datalife DS. DD (20) 


VLM Computer Electronics 

10 Park Place • Morristown, NJ 07960 
(201) 267-3268 Visa, MC, Check or COD. 


Inquiry 326 


p 


V.W. , AVSV«WA , WV. , AWi'.VAV«VAf 

Introducing . 


TurboTsx 

1 the L1TI ■ ■-AW. 

personal tax program 

• IBM PC or 100% compatible 

• 33 forms, schedules & worksheets 

• FAST! Complete return in 3 sec. 

• Windows! . 

• Exceeds IRS print specs. 

• Full depreciation support 

• 1 90 page manual 

• Much more! 

• CA/AZ available in Dec. - $30 
Req. 256K $65 plus $5 ship/hand 

(CA residents add 6’?% sales tax) 

Chip Soft 


^ , Inc. 

5674 Honors 
San Diego. CA 92122 
(619) 453-8722 

(800)621-0852 ext.355 

Dealer Inquiries Invited 

OT.VAVKV.VAVA^VAWAV.V.VV.VW 


EE 



DATA ACQUISITION 

and control for ANY computer 



The Model 1232 communicates via RS-232, 
and has 8 analog inputs (±4 VDC; 12 bits), 
8 digital inputs and outputs, and a 2000 
point buffer. Suitable for field data logging 
or lab use, the 1232 costs only $ 690 . The 
8-bit system (0-5 VDC) is $ 490 . Detailed 
manual, $6. Phone our applications 
engineer at 617 - 899-8629 or write: 

w w STARBUCK w w 

T 'T - DATA COMPANY T T 
225 Crescent St., Waltham, MA 02154 


Inquiry 48 


Inquiry 92 


Inquiry 298 


























































2101 

256 x 4 (450 m) 

1.90 

5101 

256 x 4 (450ns) (emu) 

3.90 

2102*1 

1024 x 1 (450 m) 

88 

21021-4 

1024 i 1 (450 m) HP) 

98 

21021-2 

1024 x 1 (250 m) (LP) 

1.45 

2111 

256 x 4 (450 m) 

2.45 

2112 

256 x 4 (450ns) 

295 

2114 

1024 x 4 (450 m| 

99 

2114-25 

1024 x 4 (250 m) 

1.10 

21141-4 

1024 x 4 (450 m) (LP) 

1 20 

21141-3 

1024 x 4 (300ns) (LP) 

1.30 

21141-2 

1024 x 4 (200 m) (LP) 

1.40 

2125 

1024 x 1 

2.49 

2147 

4096 x 1 (55ns) 

490 

TMS4044-4 

4096 x 1 (450 m) 

3.45 

TMS4044-3 

4096 x 1 (300 m) 

3.95 

TMS4044-2 

4096 x 1 (200 m) 

4.45 

MK4118 

1024 x 8 (250 m) 

990 

TMM2016-200 

2048 x 8 (200 m) 

4.10 

TMM2016-150 

204b x 8 (150 m) 

490 

TMM2016-100 

2048 x 8 (100 m) 

6.10 

H M 6116-4 

2048 i 8 (200 m) (cmm) 

4.70 

H M 6116-3 

2048 i 8 (150m) (cmm) 

4.90 

H M 6116-2 

2048 x 8 (120m) (cfflM) 

8.90 

HM6116LP-4 

2048 x 8 (200 m) (emu) 

5.90 

HM6116LP-3 

2048 x 8 (150 m) (chim)(LP) 

b 90 

HM61 16LP-2 

2048 x 8 (120 m) |cmM)(lP) 

9.95 

Z-6132 

4096 x 8 (300 m) (Qstat) 

33.95 

HM6264P-15 

8192 x 8 (150 m) (cmas) 

32.95 

HM6264LP-I5 

8192 x 8 (150ns) (caim) 

36.95 

H M6264LP-12 

8192 x 8 (120ns) (emos) 

46.95 

IP = Law Pewar Qstat = Quasi-Static 



DYNAMIC RAMS 


TMS4027 

4096 x 1 1250ns) 

1.95 

UPD411 

4096 x 1 (300 m) 

1 95 

M M 5280 

4096 x 1 (300 m) 

1.95 

MK4108 

8192 x 1 (200ns) 

1 90 

MM5298 

8192 x 1 (250 m) 

1.80 

4116-200 

16384 x 1 (200 m) 

.79 

4116-150 

16384 x 1 (150 m) 

1.20 

2118 

16384 i 1 (150 m) (5v| 

4.90 

4164-250 

65536 x 1 (250 m) 

299 

4164-200 

65536 i 1 (200 m) |5v) 

3.33 

4164-150 

65536 i 1 (150ns) (5v) 

3.99 

41256 

(200ns) 

2995 

41256 

(150m) 

3995 


5V = Single 5 Volt Sapply 



EPROMS 


1702 

256 i 8 (las) 

4.45 

2708 

1024 x 8 1450 m: 

2.49 

2758 

1024 x 8 (4S0 m) (5v) 

5.90 

2716 

2048 x 8 (450 m) |5v) 

295 

2716-1 

2048 x 8 (350 m) (5v) 

5.90 

TMS2516 

2048 x 8 (450 m) (5v| 

5.45 

TMS27I6 

2048 x 8 (450 m| 

695 

TMS2532 

4096 x 8 (450ns) |5v| 

5.90 

2732 

4096 x 6 (450 m) |5v| 

4.45 

2732-250 

4096 x 6 (250ns) (5v) 

8.90 

2732-200 

4096 x 8 (200ns) (5V) 

10.95 

2764 

8192 x 8 (450 m) (5v| 

6.45 

2764-250 

8192 x 8 |250 m| |5«) 

7.45 

2764-200 

8192 x 1 |200 m) (5v) 

16.45 

TMS2564 

8192 x 8 (450ns) (5v) 

12.95 


2732A (350ns) 4.45 

MC68766 8192 x 8 (450m) (5»| (24 pin) 29.95 

27128 16384 x 8 (250m) (5») 24.95 

5v = Slngls 5 Volt Supply 




74LS00 



74L800 

23 

74LSI25 

48 

74L8260 

58 

741801 

24 

7418!26 

48 

74L8266 

54 

74L302 

24 

74L8132 

58 

7411273 

1.45 

74LS03 

.24 

74L8133 

58 

74L1275 

3.30 

74LS04 

23 

74L8136 

.38 

74L8279 

48 

741805 

24 

74L8137 

98 

74L8280 

1 95 

74L808 

.27 

74L8I38 

54 

7418283 

68 

74LS09 

28 

74L8139 

54 

7418290 

88 

741810 

24 

74L8145 

1.15 

74LS293 

88 

74L81I 

34 

74LI147 

245 

74L8295 

98 

74L812 

34 

7418i48 

1 30 

74LS29I 

88 

74L813 

44 

74L8151 

54 

74L8299 

1.70 

741814 

58 

74L8153 

54 

7418323 

345 

74L815 

34 

7418154 

1.85 

74LS324 

1.70 

74L820 

24 

74LSI55 

68 

74L8352 

1.25 

74L821 

28 

74L8I56 

68 

74L8353 

1.25 

741822 

24 

741*157 

64 

74L8363 

1.30 

74L826 

28 

74LS158 

58 

74L8384 

1 90 

74L827 

28 

74L8I60 

68 

74L8365 

41 

74L828 

34 

74L8161 

64 

74L8366 

48 

741830 

24 

74L8I62 

68 

74LS367 

44 

74L832 

21 

74LS163 

64 

74L8368 

44 

741833 

54 

7418164 

68 

74L8373 

1.35 

74LI37 

34 

74LS165 

94 

74L8374 

1.35 

74L838 

34 

7418166 

1 90 

7418377 

1.35 

74L840 

24 

74L8I68 

1.70 

74L8378 

1.13 

74L842 

48 

74LS169 

1.70 

74L8378 

1.30 

74LI47 

.74 

74L8170 

1.45 

74L8385 

1.85 

741848 

.74 

74L8173 

68 

74LS386 

44 

74L849 

.74 

7418174 

.54 

74L8390 

1.15 

74L851 

24 

74L8175 

.54 

74L8393 

1.15 

74L8S4 

28 

74L8181 

2.10 

74L8395 

1.15 

74L865 

28 

74LS189 

890 

7411399 

1.45 

74L883 

1.20 

74L8190 

88 

74L8424 

290 

74L873 

38 

741819! 

88 

74LS447 

36 

74L874 

34 

7418192 

78 

74L8490 

1.90 

74L875 

38 

74L8193 

78 

74L8624 

3.95 

741876 

31 

7418194 

68 

74LS640 

215 

74L878 

48 

74L8I95 

68 

74L8645 

2.15 

74L883 

59 

74LS196 

.78 

74LS668 

1.65 

74L886 

68 

74L8197 

78 

74L8669 

1.85 

74L888 

38 

74LI221 

88 

74LS670 

1.45 

74L890 

54 

74L8240 

94 

7418874 

9.60 

74L891 

88 

74L8241 

98 

74L8682 

3.15 

74L892 

54 

74L8242 

98 

7418683 

3.15 

74L893 

54 

74L8243 

98 

74L8684 

3.15 

74L895 

.74 

7418244 

1.25 

74LS685 

315 

741896 

88 

74L8245 

1.45 

74L8688 

235 

74L8107 

38 

74L8247 

.74 

74L8689 

3.15 

74L8109 

38 

74L8248 

98 

74L8783 

2395 

7418112 

38 

74L8249 

98 

81L895 

1 45 

74LS113 

38 

74LI25I 

58 

81L896 

145 

7418114 

38 

74L8253 

58 

811897 

1.45 

74LS122 

44 

74L8257 

58 

811898 

1 45 

7418123 

78 

74L8258 

58 

25LS2521 

2.75 

7418124 

285 

74LS259 

270 

25L82569 

4.20 


6500 


CRT CONTROLLERS 

6845 . 11.85 

7220 . 38.95 

CRT 5027 . IMS 

CRT 5037 . 28.95 

TMS 99ISA. 36.95 

HO 46505ip . 1195 


DISC CONTROLLERS 


1771 .... 

14.95 

2797 . 

... 54.95 

1791 .... 

2195 

6843 

... 33.95 

1793 

25.95 

8272 . 

18.95 

1795 

21.95 

UP0765 

... 18.95 

1797 .... 

21.95 

M88876 

. 23.95 

2791 

49.95 

MB8877 

25.95 

2711 

49.95 

1691 . 

. 6.95 

2795 . 

54.95 

2143 . 

. . 6.95 


1984 

- THE 1C MASTER - 

Your ticket to fast and 
easy 1C selections 


* d 


aicf^ 


1 MHZ 


2 MHZ 


6502 

4 90 

6502A . 

6 90 

6504 

690 

6522A 

990 

6505 

890 

6532A 

10.95 

6507 

9.90 

6545A 

26.95 

6520 

4.30 

6551A 

10.95 

6522 

6 90 



6532 

9.90 

3 MHZ 


6545 

21.50 

65028 

8.95 

6551 

10.85 




6800 


66000 

45.95 

6860 

6.95 

6800 

2.75 

6862 

.10.95 

6802 

7.90 

6875 . 

6.90 

6808 

12.90 

6880 

2.20 

6809E 

.. 13.95 

6883 

21.95 

6809 

. 10.95 

68047 

23.95 

6810 

2.90 

68488 

.18.95 

6820 

4.30 



6821 

2.75 

1 

MHZ 

6828 

... 13.95 

68800 

9.95 

6840 . 

.... 11.95 

68B02 

21.25 

6843 

33.95 

68B09E 

28.95 

6844 

. 24.95 

68B09 

28.95 

6845 

.. .. 11.95 

68810. 

6.90 

6847 

.... 10.95 

68B21 

6.90 

6850 

. . 3.20 

68845 

.18.95 

6852 

4.95 

68850 

. 5.90 


MICROPROCESSORS 


8000 


8031 

. 5.75 

8088 

25.95 

8035 

5 90 

8089 . 

59.95 

8039 

5.75 

8155 . 

6.90 

INS-8060 

1695 

8155-2 . 

7.90 

INS-8073 

. 45.95 

8156 . 

6.90 

8080 . 

3.90 

8185 

28 95 

8085 

4 75 

8185-2 

3895 

8085A-2 

1095 

8741 . 

19.95 

8086 

23 95 

8748 . 

35.95 

8087 

159 95 

8755 . 

23.95 


8200 


8202 

23 95 

8255-5 

5.20 

8203 

38.95 

8257. 

7.90 

8205 

3 45 

8257-5. 

890 

8212 

1.75 

8259. 

685 

8214 

3 80 

8259-5 

. 7.45 

8216 

. 1.70 

8271. 

75.00 

8224 

2.20 

8272 

38 95 

8226 

. . 1.75 

8274. 

29.95 

8228 

. 3.45 

8275. 

28 95 

8237 

18 95 

8279. 

890 

8237-5 

2095 

8279-5 

9 00 

8238 

4.45 

8282. 

6 45 

8243 

3.95 

8283. 

6 45 

8250. 

9.95 

8284 

4.95 

8251 

4.45 

8286. 

6.45 

8253 

6 90 

8287 

6.45 

8253-5 

7 90 

8288 

24.00 

8255 

4 45 

8289 

13.95 



8292 

16.95 


Z-80 


2.5. 

.. MHZ 

4.0 MHZ 

Z80-CPU 

2.95 

Z80A-CPU . 

3.95 

Z80-CTC 

2.95 

Z80A-CTC 

3.95 

Z80-0ART 

895 

Z80A-DART 

8.95 

Z80-DMA 

1195 

Z80A-DMA .... 

8.95 

Z80-PI0 

.. 2.95 

Z80A-PI0 

3.95 

Z80-SI0/0 

10.95 

Z80A-SIO/0 .... 

11.95 

Z80-SI0/1 . 

10 95 

Z80A-SI0/1 

11.95 

Z80-SI0/2 

10 95 

Z80A-SI0/2 

11.95 

Z80-SI0/9 

10 95 

Z80A-SI0/9 

11.95 

6.0 MHZ 



Z80B-CPU 

8 95 

ZILOG 


Z80B-CTC 

895 

Z6132 . 

33.95 

Z80B-PI0 

8 95 

Z8671 

38 95 

Z80B-0ART 

1295 




MEMORY 
EXPANSION KIT 



* 89. 95 


4164 200ns 
9 for $29.97 


Low Cost EPROIV 
- PROGRAMMER • 



The “Shooter” $395.' 

• 32K bits upgradable to 128Kmemoi 

• Built-In Serial RS 232 Port 

• Program & verify 2716 thru 2725 
e Intelligent, feat programming 

e Up/download Hex, Binary, ASCII etc 
e Serial RS-232 Interface compatibl 


UV ERASERS 


QUV-T8/1 $49.9! 

ECONOMY Model 





e Erases 8 EPROMS In 20 minute 
e Plastic Enclosure 

QUV-T8/2T $97.51 

INDUSTRIAL Model 
e Tray Action, e UV Indicator 
• 60-mlnute adjustable timer 
e Steel enclosure e Safety swltc 
e Erase 15 EPROMS In 20 minutes 

QUV-T8/2N $68.9! 

(No Timer) 

LUV-1 $149.9! 

PRODUCTION Model 

QUV-T8/2 $124.9! 

FAST Industrlel Model 

ST-8 $195.01 

8-Tray Storage Cabinet 

GANG PROGRAMMER 

GANGPRO-8™ $995.' 


immmm u 



• High through-put 

• Reliable, user-friendly 
e Intelligent algorithm 

• Program and verify 2716 thru 2725 
e Stand alone (RS-232 option $18! 

OTHER PRODUCTS 

PROMPRO-8 $689.' 

64K Vertlo 

s Powerful EPROM/Micro develop 
ment programmer 

• Keypad simulation 

e 256K memory buffer option avallabl 

PROM PRO-7 $489.' 

e 32K non-expandable unit 

• Built-in 8748, 8749 programmln 

PALPRO-2 $1895.' 

Stand-alone RS-232 Unit 

• Programs 20 and 24 series PAL 

PALPRO-1 $995.' 

Programs 20-pin PALs 


DEVICES, INC. |L|0|G|I|CIR|L| 




























































































































































DIP SWITCHES 

<5 h ch 

\ o' r 


1C SOCKETS 


CRYSTALS 


\ \ \ 


'08ITI0N.79 

'OSITION.85 

'OSITION.85 

'OSITION.89 

'OSITION.89 


IIBBON CABLE 


8 pla 8T. 

(1 to 99) 

... .12 8 pla WW. 

.58 

14 pit ST. 

... .14 

14 pla WW. 

.68 

16 pli ST. 

... .16 

16 pla WW. 

.68 

18 pH ST. 

... .19 

18 pla WW. 

.98 

20 pla ST. 

... .28 

20 piaWW. 

. 1.04 

22 pla ST. 

... .29 

22 pla WW. 

. 1.34 

24 pla ST. 

... .29 

24 piaWw. 

. 1.44 

28 pla 8T. 

... .39 

28 pla WW. 

. 1.64 

40 pla 8T. 

... .48 

40 pla WW. 

. 1.94 

ST = Soldertail 

WW = Wlrewrap 


ZIF SOCKETS 




SIN6LE COLOR 

COLOR CODED 

lONTACTS 

1* 

10’ 

1* 

10” 

10 

.45 

4.30 

.78 

7.20 

16 

.50 

4.70 

.95 

8.70 

20 

.60 

5.60 

1.15 

10.90 

25 

.70 

6.50 

1.22 

11.50 

26 

.70 

6.50 

1.27 

11.50 

34 

.93 

8.50 

1.55 

14.40 

40 

1.27 

11.50 

1.82 

16.70 

50 

1.28 

12.00 

2.40 

21.90 


14 pia ZIF. 5.45 

16 pin ZIF. 5.45 

24 pia ZIF. 7.45 

28 pin ZIF. 8.45 

40 pin ZIF. 10.45 

ZIF = TEXTOOL (Zero Insertion Force) 


VOLTAGE REGULATORS 

7805T 
78M05C .. 

7808T 
7812T.... 

7815T.... 

7824T.... 

7805K... 

7812K.... 

7815K.... 

7824K... 

78L05 
78L12... 

78L15.... 

78H05K. 

78H12K... 

C,T = TO-220 K = TO-3 
L = TO-92 


.74 

7905T. 

.84 

.34 

7908T. 

.84 

.74 

7912T. 

.84 

.74 

7915T. 

.... .84 

.74 

7924T . 

.84 

.74 

1.34 

1.34 

1.34 

1.34 

7905K. 

7912K. 

... 1.44 
... 1.44 

7915K. 

... 1.44 

7924K. 

... 1.44 

.68 

79L06 . 

.78 

.68 

79L12. 

.78 

.68 

79L1S. 

.78 

9.90 

LM323K. 

. 4.90 

9.90 

UA78S40.... 

... 1.90 


DIP CONNECTORS 

NO. Of CONTACTS 

DESCRIPTION ORDER BY 8 14 16 18 20 22 24 28 40 


HIGH RELIABILITY 
TOOLED ST 
1C SOCKETS 
COMPONENT 
CARRIERS 
(DIP HEADERS) 
RIBBON CABLE 
DIP PLUGS (IDC) 


HRTuST .94 .94 .94 1.59 1.79 1.79 1.89 2.39 2.89 


ICC xx 


.60 .70 .80 .95 1.15 1.15 1.25 1.40 2.00 


IDPxx — 1.35 1.55 — — — 2.40 — 4.05 


ORDER EXAMPLE: A 14-pin High Rel. ST socket would be HRT 14 ST 

D-SUBMINIATURE 



9 

15 

25 

37 

50 

SOLDER 

MALE 

DPxxP 

1.98 

2.59 

2.40 

4.70 

5.96 

CUP 

FEMALE 

DBxxS 

2.56 

3.53 

3.15 

7.01 

9.14 

RT. ANGLE 

MALE 

DBxxPR 

1.55 

2.10 

2.90 

4.73 

— 

PC. SOLDER 

FEMALE 

DBxxSR 

2.08 

2.93 

4.32 

6.09 

— 

IDC 

MALE 

IDPxxP 

3.27 

4.60 

6.13 

9.12 

— 

IBBON CABLE FEMALE 

IDBxxS 

3.59 

5.03 

6.74 

9.98 

— 

HOODS 

BLACK 

HOOD-B 

— 

— 

1.15 

— 

— 

GREY 

HOOD 

1.50 

1.50 

1.15 

2.85 

3.40 


RDER EXAMPLE: A 5-pln Male Solder Cup would be MALE DP 25 P 

IDC CONN ECTORS 



10 

20 

26 

34 

40 

50 

SOLDER HEADER 

IDHxxS 

.77 

1.19 

1.58 

2.10 

2.48 

3.14 

RT. ANGLE SOLDER HEADER 

IDHxxSR 

.80 

1.25 

1.66 

2.21 

2.62 

3.29 

WW HEADER 

IDHxxW 

1.76 

2.88 

3.74 

4.40 

5.18 

6.53 

RT. ANGLE WW HEADER 

IDHxxWR 

1.95 

3.18 

4.12 

4.35 

4.70 

7.20 

RIBBON HEADER SOCKET 

IDS xx 

1.05 

1.76 

2.33 

3.05 

3.63 

4.55 

RIBBON HEADEN 

IDMxx 

— 

5.40 

6.15 

6.90 

7.40 

8.40 

RIBBON EOGE CARD 

IDE xx 

2.15 

2.26 

2.55 

3.15 

3.70 

4.64 


100 MHz . 
1.8432 MHz . 
2.0000 MHz . 
2.0972 MHz . 
2.4576 MHz . 
3.2768 MHz . 
3.5795 MHz . 
4.0000 MHz . 
4.1943 MHz . 
4.9160 MHz . 
5.0000 MHz . 
5.0688 MHz . 
5.1850 MHz . 
5.2429 MHz . 
5.7143 MHz . 
6.0000 MHz 
6.1440 MHz . 
6.4000 MHz . 
6.5536 MHz . 


.... 3.69 

8.0000 MHz.. 

... 2.89 

3 69 

10.0000 MHz.. 



10.7386 MHz.. 



12.0000 MHz.. 



14.3112 MHz.. 



15.0000 MHz.. 


9 RQ 

16.0000 MHz.. 


2 89 

17.4300 MHz.. 


2 69 

18.0000 MHz.. 


2.69 

18.4320 MHz.. 


.... 2.69 

19.6608 MHz.. 


.... 2.89 

20.0000 MHz.. 



22.1184 MHz.. 



32.0000 MHz.. 



36.0000 MHz.. 



48.0000 MHz.. 


2 69 

49.4350 MHz.. 

!'. 2 69 


49.8900 MHz.. 


32.768 KHz. 

.1.69 



CRYSTAL CLOCK 
OSCILLATORS 


PART NO. 
1.000 
1.843 
2.000 
4.000 
8.000 
10.000 
16.000 
18.432 
19.660 
20.000 
32.000 


FREQUENCY 
1.0000 MHz 
1.8432 MHz 
2.0000 MHz 
4.0000 MHz 
8.0000 MHz 
10.0000 MHz 
16.0000 MHz 
18.4320 MHz 
19.6608 MHz 
20.0000 MHz 
32.0000 MHz 


EDGECARD 
CONECTORS 


S-100 ST . . 3.85 
S-100WW. .. 4.85 
72-pli ST . 6.85 
72-plnWW... 7.85 


50-pin ST... 4.85 
44-pie ST... 2.85 
44-pin WW... 4.85 


RESISTORS 

Vs WATT 5% CARBON FILM 
ALL STANDARD VALUES 
FROM 1 OHM-10 MEG OHM 

50 PCS . 1.25 

100 PCS . 2.00 

1,000 PCS.15.00 


LED 


LAMPS 

1-99 100+ 


Jumbe RED .09 

Jumbo GREEN .16 
Jumbo YELLOW .16 


INTERFACE CHIPS 


8T26 . 

.... 1.54 

8T98. 

.88 

68T28 . 

.... 1.84 

DM8131 ... 

... . 2.90 

8T95 . 

.88 

DP8304 . . 

.... 2.24 

8T96 . 

.88 

088835 ... 

.... 1.94 

8T97 . 

.88 

DS8836 

.98 


SAFT Power Products: 


- TRANSISTORS - 


ORDER EXAMPLE: A 20-pin WW Header would be IDH 20 W 


2N9I8... 

. 49 

2N3563.. 

. .39 

2N4402.. 

. 24 

MPS918.. 

. .24 

2 N 3565 

. .39 

2N4403. 

. 24 

2N2102.. 

. .74 

PN3565. . 

. 24 

2N4857. 

. 99 

2N2218.. 

. .49 

MPS3638. 

.24 

PN4918. 

. 24 

2N2218A. 

.. .49 

MP83640. 

.24 

2N5088 

. 24 

2N2219.. 

. .49 

PN3643.. 

. 24 

PN5129 

. 24 

2N22I9A. 

...49 

PN3644.. 

. 24 

PN 5139 

. 24 

2N2222.. 

. 24 

MP83704. 

...14 

2N5209. 

. 24 

PN2222.. 

. .09 

MPS3708. 

...14 

2N6028 

. 34 

MPS2369. 

.24 

2N3772... 

1.80 

2N6043 

.1.70 

2N2484.. 

. 24 

2N3903. 

. 24 

2N6045.. 

1.70 

2N2905 

. 49 

2N3904. 

. .09 

MP8-A05 

.24 

2N2907. 

. 24 

2N3908.. 

.09 

MPS-A06. 

.24 

PN 2907 

120 

2N4122.. 

. 24 

MPS-A55. 

.24 

2N3055. 

. .78 

2N4123.. 

. 24 

TIP29 ... 

.64 

3055T 

68 

2N4249.. 

. 24 

TIP31 ... 

. .74 

2N3393.. 

. 28 

2N4304.. 

. .74 

TIP32 .. 

. .78 

2N3414.. 

24 

2N4401.. 

.24 




STANDBY POWER 
— SUPPLIES — 


£ 2 ? 

Protect your computer and its 
precious data from black-outs or 
brownouts. Turns on if the power 
goes off at the wall outlet! 

SPS0200VA/117V $499.00 
SPS0400VA/117V $699.00 

SURGE 

- SUPPRESSOR - 

IQ If j 

;• 8|r 


STOPS lightening bolts or other 
high energy line surges from 
damaging your computer’s sen¬ 
sitive components. 

SURGE SUPPRESSOR $149.00 

-EMI/RFI FILTER- 


Eliminates line noise caused by 
office equipment, printers, flour- 
escent lights, switches, etc. 

INTERFERENCE FILTER $49.95 

LINE 

-CONDITIONER- 

Isolation transformer is harmon¬ 
ic compensating to hold line volt¬ 
age steady, regulated; also sup¬ 
presses pulses and line noise. 

LINE CONDITIONER $395.00 


ORDER TOLL FREE 

( 800 ) 

538-8800 

(CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS) 

( 800 ) 

848-8008 


[MasterCard] 



Inquiry 95 


FEBRUARY 1985 •BYTE 449 

























































































































































Microprocessor 
Software Development 
on VAX or PDP-11. 





You can develop software ' ^ ^• 

for Z80, 8080, 8085, NCS800, and 
8086 using native mode compilers and assemblers. 

Use low-cost cross tools for other micropro¬ 
cessors. Interface in-circuit emulators perfectly You 
can run Intel development tools under ISIS or UDI. 

Our plug-in processor cards let you run CP/M-80, 
CP/M-86, or MS-DOS from any terminal on your 
VAX or PDP-11 system. 

Prices start at just $1295. Ask for our FREE 
catalog of 350 development and cross development 
tools r—\ 

3375 Scott Blvd Suite 236 
Santa Clara, CA 95054 
(408) 980-1678 


D 


Inquiry 360 


FREE SOFTWARE 

RENT 

FROM THE PUBLIC DOMAIN! 

User Group Software isn't copyrighted, so no fees 
to pay! 1000's of CP/M and IBM software 
programs in COM and source code to copy 
yourself! Games, business, utilities! All FREE! 

CP/M USERS GROUP LIBRARY 

Volumes 1-92, 46 disks rental-$45 

SIG/M USERS GROUP LIBRARY 

Volumes 1-90, 46 disks rental-$45 
Volumes 91-199, 55 disks rental-$65 
SPECIAL.' Rent all SIG/M volumes for $99 

170 5% FORMATS AVAILABLE! 

IBM PC-SIG (PC DOS) LIBRARY 

Volumes 1-230, 5%" disks $250 

Public Domain User Group Catalog Disk $5 pp. 
(CP/M only) (payment in advance, please) 
Rental is for 7 days after receipt, 3 days grace to 
return. Use a credit card, no disk deposit. 
Shipping, handling & insurance — $7.50 per library. 
(619) 941-0925 information, 

(619) 727-1015 anytime order machine 
Have your credit card ready! 

Public Domain Software Center 

1533 Avohill Dr. 

Vista, CA 92083 


AM EX 


Inquiry 229 




BASF 


FlexyDisks® 

5 V* " 



Specify soft. 

10 or 16 sector Minimum Order 20 


Single side 
double density 


Double side 
double density 


1.35 

1.55 


rwn sumi in umry box pvtiy boo .iol 
Certified Check - Money Order - Personal Check Alloar up 
to 2 weeks for personal checks to dear Add $3 00 per 100 
or part to each order tor U.P.S. shipping charges. 

NJ Residents add 6% sales tax 

Q4-TZ- 

/NO 


178 Route 206 South. P.O. Box 993 
Department C 

Somerville, N.J. 08876 • (201) 874-5050 


Inquiry 82 


NEW! A full function 

RS-232 DATA GENERATOR 

for Only $199.95 


Tests printers. CRT’s, 
modems. Outputs ASCII 
data in various combina¬ 
tions of line length, baud 
rate, parity, number of 
stop bits, word length. 

Uses 9-volt battery (op¬ 
tional AC power supply 
available @ $14.95). 

ORDER TODAY! Only 
$199.95 All cash orders 
postpaid (IL res. add 6% sales tax); we ac¬ 
cept MC. Visa. FREE: new illustrated catalog 
of RS-232 interface and testing equipment 
Phone (815) 434-0846 


B &n electronics 

MANUFACTURING COMPANY 

P.0. Box 1008B, OTTAWA, IL 61350 


Model 232DG 



Inquiry 28 


DISK DRIVES 

Half Height 
IBM Compatible 

ONE YEAR 
WARRANTY 

40 tr. DS/DD. $115.00 

80 tr. DS/DD. $139.00 

1.2 meg. floppy. $259.00 

Enclosures and mounting kits 
Special bracketed pair pricing 

IN .2 DAY 
STOCK w SHIP 

(B allied micro devices 

2809 Boardwalk, Ann Arbor, Ml 48104 
(313) 996-1282 :TX 2907707 AMEL 

* Manufactured by SANYO 


Inquiry 16 


*IBM® Compatible 

pcpipeun e 

E PROMS Call 1 Lowest Prices Anywhere 

*4164-150/200 64K DRAM 2?5 

2764-250 . 575 

6116-LP3.499 

256K.2650 

TTL & HCT Parts — now avail Call 

8087-3-6 . 8900 

♦TM-100-2 . 16995 

*Teac Half-Heights. 16495 

*MPI DSDD. 13995 

Excess Inventories Wanted 
Add $3 95 shipping to all orders • Prices subject to 
change • PO. s on approval • C O D. OK • All new, no 
surplus, no seconds. QUANTITY DISCOUNTS 
4920 Cypress St.. Ste. 100, Tampa. FL 33607 
In FL and for into, call 813-875-0299 
FOR O RDERS ONLY, 800-237-8910 

SB 33 TELEX 330690 


Inquiry 247 


TAX PAK 


INTEGRATED TAX PROGRAM WITH: 

Forms 

1040 Tax Return 

1040A Short Form 

2106 Employee Bus Exp 
2119 Sale of Residence 
2441 Child Care 

3468 Investment Credit 
3903 Moving Expense 
4562 Depreciation 

4684 Casualties & Thefts 
5696 Energy Credit 

Schedules 

A Itemized Deductions 

B Interest & Dividends 

C Business Profit or Loss 
D Capital Gams 

E Supplemental Income 
G Income Averaging 

SE Self Employment 

W Mamed CpI Both Wort 

Formats 8" CPM2.2 

IBM 3740 IBM PC-DOS 


Suitable for multiple clients or evaluating alternate filing 
strategies Produces transcribeable IRS forms $33. 
For 1985 edition, return 1984 serialized disk and $27 

CANDELARIA WORKS 

3955 Club Dr Atlanta, GA 30319 
404/266-8759 
To order call toll-free 

800 - 621-5839 

Visa/MasterCard accepted 


Maxell Floppy Disks 

The Mini-Disks 
with maximum quality. 




Dealer inquiries 
invited. CO.D's 
accepted. Call 
FREE (800) 235-4137 


PACIFIC EXCHANGES 

100 Foothill Blvd San Luis 
San Luis Obispo. CA 93401 
In Cal call (800) 592-5935 or 
(805)543-1037 


STD BUS 64K SINGLE BOARD 
COMPUTER/CONTROLLER 



FEATURES 


•8085A CPU 
•64K Dynamic RAM 
•4K Monitor EPROM 
with Disassembler 
•256 Byte Static RAM 
•Parallel & Serial I/O 
-2 8/Bit Prog Ports 
-I 6/Bit Prog Port 
-RS232 Serial Port 
•6.144 MHz Crystal 


•Interfaces to CP/M 
Computers for 
Program Development 
•Automatic Baud Rate 
•5 Interrupts 
• 14 Bit Prog Counter/ 
Timer 

•Memex Line for 
Memory Expansion to 
I0OK 


STOCK. $295 Assembled & Tested, 

Single Quantity Visa, M.C., Amex & COD. 

Add $5.00 S & H. 

STD Mother Card & Card Cage. STD Dual Channel 
Serial Card/Protocol Converter & other Product Lines. 

Custom Designs & Development 
Our Specialty. 

SYNALTA SYSTEMS 
31-14 Broadway Astoria, NY 11106 
718/728-6700 


Inquiry 244 


Inquiry 305 


Inquiry 42 





































































Inquiry 159 FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 451 


OKIDATA 
Prices Slashed 
*FREE IBM ROMS 

160 CPS. Correspondence Qua 

Okidata 92 parallel 


2K serial board _ 

IBM PC ROMS for 92 
IBM PC ROMS for 93 
Extra 82/93 Ribbon 
82/92 tractor_ 


120 CPS & 200 CPS OKIDATAS 

Okidata 82 120 CPS _ 

Okidata 83 120 CPS_ 

Okidata 84 parallel 200 CPS 

Okidata 84 serial 200 CPS_ 

2K serial board _ 


IBM PC ROMS for 82/83 
IBM PC ROMS for 84 


f LIST 

JADE 

$599 

$389.95* 

$995 

$599.95* 

$120 

$99.95 

$59 

$49.95 

$69 

$59.95 

$9.95 

$4.95 

$89 

$54.95 

LIST 

JADE 

_ $499 

$299.95 

$775 

$569.95* 

57395 

$799.95* 

$1495 

$949.95 

$150 

$119.95 

$49 

$39.95 

$99 

$89.95 


*FREE! Plug-n-Play option with 
purchase of 92, 93, or 84 


A-B PRINTER SWITCH 

Allows your computer to run either of two printers 
standard parallel switch box. list jade 

Printer switch _ $149 $89.95 

Extra Cable_ $40 $29.95 


The LITTLE BOARD with 
FREE! CP/M 2.2 

Minature single board CP M computer designed to 
mount directly on top of a 5 1 4 " floppy disk drive 
(7.75" x 5 75") Contains Z80A. CPU. 64K RAM. 
Boot Eprom. terminal port, modem port, parallel 
printer port, floppy disk controller, and CP/M 2.2 
included FREE' list jade 

Little Board with CP/M __ S400 

Support package $50 

Serial cable $13 

_ $30 


Diskless monitor Eprom 

190K Disk drive 

350K Disk drive_ 


_ $249 
. $399 


$349.95 

$48.95 

$11.95 

$24.95 

$99.95 

$149.95 


Continental U.S. 

800 - 421-5500 

Inside California 

800 - 262-1710 

For Technical Inquires 
or Customer Service call. 

213 - 973-7707 





EPSON PRINTERS 

New Plus Series in Stock! 


\ Kaypro, etc. 


- 542 


$16.50 
$19.50 1 

$1 W ' 


LETTER QUALITY 
PRINTERS ON SALE! 


EPSON RX-80 

SAVE 

SAVE 

$80.00 

$100.00 

$250.00 

$200.00 

Diablo 630 40 CPS 

$2340 

$1699.95 

EPSON RX-80F/T 

Tractor for 630 

$250 

$219.95 

tr uvii n a our / i 

EPSON RX-100F/T 

SAVE 

Starwriter F-10 40 CPS 

$1895 

$999.95 

EPSON JX-80F/T 

SAVE 

Starwriter F-10 55 CPS _ 

_ $1995 

$1199.95 

EPSON FX-80F/T 

SAVE 

$200.00 
$300 00 

Tractor for F-10 

$250 

$199.95 

EPSON FX-100F/T 

SAVE 

SAVE 

SAVE 

$149 

$59 

New Comrex CR-IIE 

$599 

$439.95 

EPSON LQ-1500 

^UvU.UU 

$300.00 

$500.00 

$99.95 

Tractor for CR-II 

$120 

$99.95 

EPSON/COMREX 420 CPS 

2K Sprial Board RX/FX 

Keyboard for CR-II 

. $199 

$179.95 

Sheet feeder for CR-II _ 

_ $259 

$199.95 

tr\ <jv i idi uudi u n a r a 

FX-80 Tractor 

$39.95 

Juki 6100 18 CPS 

_ $599 

$449.95 

LQ-1500 Tractor 

$89 

$49.95 

$399.95 

Tractor for 6100 

$149 

$124.95 

LO-ISOn Shppt Fppdpr 

$499 

NEC 3550 33 CPS 

$2250 

$1399.95 

lv4 ijuu oiicci rccuci 

Tractor for 3550 

_ $265 

$229.95 




TOSHIBA PI351 

High speed & letter quality! 

( ^ ^ I - 



High quality 24 pm head. 192 CPS draft mode. 96 
CPS letter quality list jade 


Sheet Feeder 


$1895 
__ $195 
- $1095 


$1299.95 

$174.95 

$899.95 


MANNESMAN-TALLY 
Spirit 80 Printer 


List Price $399 


$ 249 95 


Hurry Limited Quantity! 


PRINTER ACCESSORIES 


IBM PC style cable _ 

Standard parallel cable 

Apple Card & cable _ 

RS-232 serial cable_ 

Ribbons _ 


JADE 

_ $54 $28.95 

_ $40 $28.95 

$109 $49.95 

_ $30 $24.95 


Apple lie cable 


AS LOW AS $4.99 
_ $39 $27.95 


MICROFAZER BUFFERS 
Quadram 

64K (parallel model expands 


Expandable to 
to 512K) 

8K parallel in parallel out _ $169 

32K parallel in parallel out __ $225 

128K parallel in/parallel out _ $445 

8K serial in parallel out _ $199 

32K serial in parallel out _ S260 

8K parallel in serial out ... _ $199 

32K parallel in serial out . $260 

8K serial in serial out . $199 

32K serial in serial out .. $260 


MICROBUFFER 
Practical Peripherals 

Stand alone Microbuffers list 

32K parallel in parallel out _ $299 

64K parallel in parallel out _ $349 

32K serial in serial out _ $299 

64K serial in/serial out _ $349 

64K add-on board_ $179 


$139.95 
$164.95 
$269.95 
S169.95 
$199.95 
$169.95 
SI 99.95 
$169.95 
SI 99.95 


JADE 

$229.95 

$269.95 

$229.95 

$269.95 

$149.95 


We accept cash, checks, credit cards, or purchase orders from qualified firms and institutions. 

Minimum prepaid order $15.00 California residents add 6y 2 % tax. Export customers outside the US or Canada please 

add 10% to all prices. Prices and availibility subject to change without notice. Shipping and handling charges 
via UPS Ground 50C/lb. UPS Air $1 00/lb minimum charge $3.00 


Computer Products 




























































452 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 Inquiry 160 


Guaranteed service, support, and fast delivery on the name brands you desire and ... 

YOU'LL LOVE OUR PRICES 



20 MEGABYTE 
Tape Back-up System 

• IBM PC. XT AT compatible 

• Low-power, half-height tape drive 

• Uses standard data cassettes 

» Umoue flexible software allows choice 
of file-by-file or complete mirror-image 
back-up & retrieval 

• 6 different file selection parameters 

• Automatic error checking & correction 
. Includes controller card & software 

LIST JADE 

20 MB cassette back-up $995 S695.00 

45 MB V," tape back-up $1195 S895.00 

External 45 MB system $1495 Siuss.uu 


10 Megabyte Hard Disk 
for IBM PC $699.00 

Plug-n-run. ready to go. complete with controller 
card, data cable, and mounting hardware, totally 
PC/XT compatible, faster than XT, handles 4 
different operating systems, streamer tape back-up 
available External model includes cabinet & power 
supply. list jade 

10 mbyte internal 

10 mbyte external __ 

15 mbyte internal_ 

15 mbyte external __ 

20 mbyte internal_ 

20 mbyte external_ 

33 mbyte internal 
33 external __ 


10 mbyte internal tape 
10 mbyte external tape 


_ $1350 
_ $1585 
__ $1795 
_ $1895 
. $1800 
$2060 
$3298 
_ $3388 
_ $1000 
_ $1240 


$699.95 

$849.95 

$899.95 

$1099.95 

$995.95 

$1299.95 

$1849.95 

$1999.95 

$599.95 

$749.95 


KEYTR0NICS KEYBOARDS 

LIST JADE 

5150 _ $209 $159.95 

5151 _ $299 $199.95 

5152 _ $329 CALL 



MODEM PHONE 

• Speaker phone & direct connect 

• Auto answer, auto disconnect 

• 20 number x 18 digit memory 

Modem phone 300 $149 $99 95 

Modem phone 1200 _ $499 $299.95 



OMNI-READER 
TEXT SCANNER 

For DATA ENTRY 

• Enters data at 160 cps 

• Serial interface configured as a modem 

• 300 600 1200. 2400. 4800. 9600 baud 


SALE PRICED AT 


S479.95 


360K DISK DRIVES 
for IBM PC 

Double sided, double density 

Tandon 100-2 

Teac 55B_ 

360K Half height drive 


$159.00 each 
S129.00 each 
$99.00 each 


AST for IBM PC 


Six Pak plus OK 
Six Pak plus 64K 


LIST 


JADE 


Six Pak plus 256K 
Six Pak plus 384K 
Mega plus 64K 
Mega plus 256K 
Mega plus 512K 
I/O plus 
Graphpak 


N A $249.95 
$395 $269.95 

S695 $399.95 

$945 $469.95 

. $395 $269.95 

_ $665 $379.95 

$1095 $699.95 

$165 $119.95 

$790 $574.95 



IBM-AT Multi Function 
Expansion Board 

. Up to 3 Megabytes of RAM 

• Uses standard 64K or 256K chips 

• Has PAL for split addressing 

. Low power IBM-AT high speed bus 
. One parallel & one serial port 

• Second serial port optiona^ JADt 

128K, 1 serial. 1 parallel S495 S395.00 

Second serial port option $59 S49.9b 



Expansion Boards 
for your IBM-AT 

Quadport-AT IS. IP 
4 Serial port kit 
Quadmeg-AT / MEG 
Quadtneg-AT 2 MEG 
Quadmeg-A4 4 MEG 
JADE AT-Expando plus 
AT-Memory Master plus 
AST Advantage-AT 
Bar Code Reader System 
128K Upgrade Kit 
20 Megabyte Hard disk 
30 Megabyte hard disk 

PERSYST BOARDS 

Mono display adapter 
Mono display adapter w/parallel 
BoB Hi-res display adapter 
Time Spectrum SB 384 64K 


LIST 

$154 
S195 
$2465 
$3995 
S7490 
$495 
$495 
$495 
$895 
$395 
SI 790 
$1999 


LIST 
. $225 
$250 
$595 
$395 


$139.95 

$179.95 

$1995.00 

$3195.00 

CALL 

$395.00 

$429.00 

S449.00 

$695.00 

$169.00 

S995.00 

$1495.00 


HIGH SPEED 8087 APU 


List Price $293 


ir-' 

2400 BAUD MODEM 

• 0-300, 1200, 2400 baud 

• Bell 103, 113, 212A, CCITT V.22. 1 7.22 

• Auto baud, redial, and answer 

• 8 LED status indicators 

• Self test & speaker volume control 

• Looks like a Hayes smartmodem 

• 1200 baud & 1200B modems also avail 

LIST 

Jade 1200 5399 $249.95 

Jade 120 OB IBM PC $299 $239.95 

Jade 2400 S699 $449 95 


HAYES Smartmodem 

Sophisticated direct-connect auto-answer/auto 
dial modem, touch tone or pulse dialing RS232C 



interface programmable 

LIST 

JADE 


HAYES 

Smartmodem 2400 

S895 

$649.95 

JADE 

HAYES 

Smartmodem 1200 

$699 

$459.95 

$189.95 

HAYES 

1200B w/o Smartcom II 

$539 

S359.95 

$199.95 

HAYES 

1200B for IBM PC 

. $599 

$389.95 

$469.95 

HAYES 

Smartmodem 300 

$289 

$199.00 

$299.95 

HAYES 

Hayes Cronograph 

$249 

S199.95 


HAYES 

Micromodem 100 

$399 

$299.95 


HAYES 

Micromodem lie 

S299 

S239.95 


HAYES 

Smartmodem lie 

S399 

S249 95 


HAYES 

PLEASE Software 

S395 

$299.95 

$179.95 

HAYES 

Smartcom II 

S149 

$99.95 





























































Inquiry 160 FEBRUARY 1985 


03 


New! from JADE 
IBM Multifunction Card 

Full one year warranty!!! 

Up to 384K. parallel printer port. RS-232 serial port. 
FREE serial cable, clock/calendar. RAM 
disk/spooler and diagnostic software package 



LIST 

JADE 

OK 

_ _ $349 

$198.95 

64K 

$449 

$239.90 

256K 

$549 

$349.90 

384K 

_ $649 

$439.90 



High speed RAM upgrade kit with FREE! parity 
(error detection) and one year warranty jade 

128K RAM Kit for AT $359 $169.95 

256K RAM Upgrade Kit $495 $179.95 


The Best from EVEREX 


Giaphics Edge 
Graphics Pacer 
Ever Graphics _ 
Evercom Modem 
Magic card OK 
Magic card 384K 


$499 

$489 

$289 

$359 

$275 

S799 


JADE 

$389.95 

$379.95 

$249.95 

$299.95 

$199.95 

$399.95 


yuHuiiHm iui i kjiti r u 

JADE 

Quadboard No RAM _ 

_ $269 

$234.95 

Quadboard 64K 

. $395 

$275.95 

Quadboard 128K 

- $495 

$319.95 

Quadboard 256K 

$595 

$399.95 

Quadboard 384K 

$795 

$469.95 

Quadlink 

„ $680 

$449.95 

Quad 512 plus 64K 

$325 

$239.95 

Quad 512 plus 256K 

. $550 

$359.95 

Quad 512 plus 512K_ 

. $895 

$549.95 

Ouadcolor 1 

.. $295 

$209.95 

Ouadcolor II . . _ 

- $275 

$199.95 

Ouari ? MFfi XAI/519K 

$1195 

$995.00 

Quad 2 MEG w/1 mbyte _ 

$1995 

$1695.00 

Quad 2 MEG w/2 mbyte _ 

$3495 

$2995.00 

Pallette Master 256 colors 

. $695 

$599.00 

Quadgraph Graphics Card 

$499 

$399.00 

Quadvue IS, IP, C, monochrome 

_ $345 

$299.00 

Quad sprint doubler _ 

_ $645 

$549.00 

576K Max PAQ w/64K 

- $205 

$189.00 

516K Max PAQ W/384K 

- $595 

$349.00 

Asher Voice & Data _ 

_ $695 

$599.00 


MICROSOFT for IBM PC 


Mouse with Word 
Mouse_ 


LIST JADE 

$495 $339.95 

$199 $129.95 


PC 



® 

OPTION #1 

256K. 

two disk drives. 
Monochrome card, 
monitor, and printer port 

$1895. 


$ 1595 . 

256K, dual disk drives, and disk controller 


OPTION #2 

256K. 

two disk drives, 
disk controller. 

PGS color monitor, 
color graphics card, 
parallel port. 

$2395. 


Call us Toll Free! 

& our experts will custom build 
an IBM PC to satisfy your exact needs. 


OPTION #3 

256K expandable to 640K. 
10 megabyte hard disk, 
parallel port, 
serial port, 
clock/calendar. 

RAM disk/spooler, 
color card 

Amdek 300G monitor 

$2995. 


IBM VIDEO BOARDS 

Hercules Color_ 

Hercules Graphic _ 

Plantronics Color plus 

Ouadcolor I_ 

Ouadcolor II _ 


AST Monograph plus 
PC Peacock 
PC 384K Genie OK __ 


LIST 

S245 

S499 

$549 

JADE 

$189.95 

$339.95 

$379.95 

$209.95 

PRO MODEMS 
from Prometheus 

1200B for IBM PC 

LIST 

$375 

JADE 

$249.95 

$295 

1200B for IBM PC w/software 

$399 

$299.95 

$275 

S209.95 

1200 RS-232 stand alone _____ 

$494 

S369.95 

$595 

$449.95 

1200A for Apple 

$449 

S329.95 

$299 

$239.95 

1200 Mac Pac for Macintosh 

S495 

$389.95 


Paradise Graphics card _ 

Paradise Module A 

Paradise Module B _ 

Everex Graphics Edge_ 

Hi-Res MONITORS 

Amdek 300G 
Amdek 300A 
Amdek 31OA 
Amdek Color 300 
Amdek Color 500 
Amdek Color 600 
Amdek Color 700 
PGS MAX-12 
PGS HX-12 640x240 

PGS SR-12 720x480 _ 

PGS Doubler board 

14 inch Quadchrome II _ 

Comrex CR6800 750x400 

Gorilla Green_ 

Gorilla Amber _ 


JADE Hi-res Amber_ 

JADE Hi-res Green_ 

JADE Color RGB 640x240 
JADE Color RGB 720x480 


$395 
$395 
S95 
$275 
S599 


LIST 

$179 
SI 99 
$230 
$349 
S525 
$650 
S799 
$269 
$699 
$799 
$299 
$599 
S649 
$99 
. $119 
Si 99 
SI 99 
S699 
$799 


$249.95 

$319.95 

$87.95 

$239.95 

$389.95 


$139.95 

$149.95 

$179.95 

$249.95 

$399.95 

$469.95 

$589.95 

$199.95 

$469.95 

$649.95 

S229.95 

$499.95 

$499.95 

$89.95 

$99.95 

$139.95 

$129.95 

$349.95 

$469.95 


SHUGART SA 801R 

SHUGART SA 801R SS/DD 

List $502 _$359.00 ea 2 for $349.99 ea. 

SHUGART SA-851R DS/DD 

List S605 __$459.00 ea 2 for $455.00 ea 


ULTRA-VIOLET 
EPROM ERASERS 

Spectronics w/o timer _ 

Spectronics with timer _ 

Logical Devices _ 


LIST 

JADE 

_ $99 

$69.95 

$139 

$94.95 

_ $89 

$49.95 


ISOBAR 


The ISOBAR looks likea standard multioutlet power 
strip but contains surge suppression circuitry and 
built-in noise filters, plus 15 amp circuit breaker 

LIST JADE 

4 receptacle S89 $59.95 

8 receptacle $99 $69.95 

UNINTERRUPTABLE POWER SUPPLY 

A must for every computer system 

425 Watt UPS _ $539 $469.95 


Bernoulli Boxes 
from IOMEGA 


5. 10 or 20 megabyte removeable cartridge mass 
storage system with flexability not available in 
hard disks 

5 mbyte system/Macintosh $1896 $1699.95 

10 mbyte system/IBM_ $2695 $2099.95 

20 mbyte system/IBM_ $3895 $3099.95 

Extra 10 mbyte cartridge_ $100 $79.95 


APPLE ACESS0RIES 

Full Height Disk Drive 
Half Height Disk Drive 

Controller _ 

CP/M 3.0 Card 

ALS Z Engine_ 

16K RAM Card 
Best 80 Column Card 
Printer Card & Cable 
Fan w/surge protect 
Koala Pad 
Grappler Plus 
Buffered Grappler/16K 
Disk Drive for Apple lie 
10 Meg Hard Disk 


LIST 
$299 
$249 
$100 
$399 
S299 
_ $99 
S219 
^$109 
. $99 
$125 
$175 
$245 
. S299 
SI 495 


JADE 

$149.95 

$149.95 

$79.95 

$269.95 

$145.95 

$39.95 

$139.95 

$49.95 

S59.95 

$89.95 

$119.95 

$175.95 

$159.95 

$895.00 


Place Orders Toll Free! 

Continental U.S.A. Inside California 

(800)421-5500 (800)262-1710 


Los Angeles Area 

(213) 973-7707 



Computer Products 

4901 West Rosecrans Ave. Hawthorne. California 90250 






























































^»' vV 






P **' 1 


COMPUTERS 

SANYO 

MBC550 — Includes 128K Memory, 5 V* 
Disk Drive, Parallel Printer Port. CPU has 
RGB Color and Monochrome Composit Video. 
Software includes Sanyo BASIC, Wordstar, 
Calcstab and Easywnter Call for Price 

MBC555 Call for Price 

Sanyo Monitors, Serial Cards, Upgrades 
Avail, from $av-On Call for Prices 

COMPAQ 

COMPAQ PLUS 2 Drives [1 Floppy & 

1 10 Meg] & 256K S3740 

DESK TOP Model 1 Call 

DESK TOP Model 2 For 

DESK TOP Model 3 Pricing 

CALL FOR PRICING ON APPLE, KAYPRO, 
TAVA, ZENITH, EPSON, NEC, COLUMBIA 
AND OTHER CPU’s. 

WE CAN GET YOU THE LOWEST 
PRICE AROUND 

PRINTER INTERFACE 
and PERIPHERALS 

PRINTER CABLES 

ALL MAKES (6 foot long] $20 

FOURTH DEMINSION 

PAR CARD & CABLE for Apple . $48 

ORANGE MICRO 

GRAPPLER +. $119 

GRAPPLER + W/16K . 175 

OKIDATA 

SERIAL INTERFACE $89 

MICRO TEK 

DUMPLING GX $85 

DUMPLING GX (Exp to 64K] 145 

BAM 16 Call 


►O'*** 

PRINTERS 

STAR MICRONICS 

GEMINI 10X (120cps) $259 

OKIDATA 

82A [120cps par & ser ] $299 

92P (160cps] 399 

84P [200cps] Call 

EPSON 

RX80FT (120cps, Fric/Tractor] $299 

FX80 (160cps) $399 

JUKI 

6100 [18cps & let. quality] $409 

6300 ..:.. . Call 

BROTHER Call 

DYNAX Call 

NEC Call 

MONITORS 

PRINCETON GRAPHICS 

HX12 [High Res, IBM Compatible] $459 

SRI 2 . Call 

MAXI 2 185 

SCAN DOUBLER Call 

AMDEK 

300G 12*’ Green $126 

300A 12” Amber 135 

31OA 12” Amber (Monochrome] 160 
COLOR I + (Color Composite] 299 

COLOR II + [RGB w/Cable] 409 

ZENITH 

ZVM122 12” Amber $99 

ZVM123 12” Green 99 

LEADING EDGE 

GORILLA 12” Green $89 

GORILLA 12” Amber 99 

TAXAN 

121 Call, We Have 

122 The Lowest 

420 Priced Taxan 

440 Monitors In Town 

DISKETTES 

DYSAN 

5 ’4" DS/DD (Box of 10] $28 


MODEMS 

HAYES 

300 $199 

1200 External, PC Compatible 469 

1200B Internal, PC Compatible 399 

MICRO MODEM lie 239 

NOVATION 

ACCESS 183 Call 

J-CAT Call 

APPLE CAT Call 

ANCHOR 

MARK VII (300 Baud) $99 

MARK XII (1200 Baud) 239 

MARK VI 69 | 

CALL FOR PRICING ON OTHER MODEMS 


The $av-On Sytems 

THE PROFESSIONAL SYSTEM 

APPLE 

2 Drives, 80 Col Card, Apple Monitor 
Very Nicely Priced 0 ^1 O O C 

At A Very Very Low 9 I CwO 


PORTABLE COMPUTER 

DATA GENERAL 

Small Enough to Fit In A Brief Case 
PC Compatible 
Low Priced 


Call 


COMPAQ 

2 Drives with 256K 

$ 2195.00 


APPLE ADD-ONS 

TG 

JOY STICK Call For 

SELECT PORT Lowest 

PADDLES Prices 

MICROMAX 

VIEWMAX 80 $130 I 

VIEWMAX 80e 130| 

KENSINGTON 

SYSTEM SAVER $6 

MORE AVAILABLE Ci 


$28 















CALL US WITH YOUR LOWEST 
ADVERTISED IBM PRICE ... WE 
WILL MATCH IT PLUS PAY SHIPPING 


IBM PRODUCTS 


IBM COMPUTERS 

1 up 

5 up 

10 up 

TEAC 

1 up 

5 up 

10 up 

IBM PC Bare Bone 64K w/Dr Cont 

$1179 

$1165 

$1150 

TEAC 55B [Vs High Drive for PC] . 

$135 

$130 

$125 

IBM PC 64K with 1 Drive. 

1299 

1285 

1275 





IBM PC 256K with 2 Drives. 

1549 

1540 

1520 

INTEL 




IBM PC XT 128K w/1 Drive & 10Mb 3349 

Call 

Call 

INTEL 8087-3 Math Coprocessor . 

$129 

$125 

$120 

IBM PC XT 256K with 2 Drives 

3499 

Call 

Call 





IBM PC AT Enhansed, Base, Jr. . . . 

Call 

Call 

Call 

MEMORY (NEC, Tl, Others) 

100 up 1000 up2000 up 

IBM PORTABLE 256K with 2 Dr 

Call For 

Low 

Price 

RAM CHIPS (All are 200nS or faster] $2.50 

$2.25 

$2.15 


DRIVE CONTROLLER CARDS 

IBM Original [Controls 4 drives] . $139 

MAYNARD [Any Configuration] Call 

IBM Copy [120 Day Warranty]. 119 

COMPATIBLE DRIVES FOR PC 

CDC [IBM Compatible]. $159 

TANDON Full Height 320K 159 

MPI A2 [IBM Compatible]. 119 

TALLGRASS HARD DISKS 

20Mbyte w/20Mb Back-up. Call 

35Mbyte w/45Mb Back-up. Call 

70Mbyte w/60Mb Back-up. Call 

MAYNARD, ALPHA OMEGA, GENIE 
CALL FOR PRICING 

Valentines Specials 

IBM PC SYSTEM 

w/2 Drives, 256K Memory 
Mono Monitor, Mono Card w/Print Port 
8087-3 Math Coprocessor & DOS 2.1 

$ 1899.00 
IBM PC 

With 1 Drive, 128K, Monitor 
Interface & Monitor 

$ 1599.00 

IBM PC SYSTEM 

256K, 2 V* High TEAC Drives, 10 Meg 
Hard Disk, Monitor & Interface 

$ 2499.00 

FINANCING AVAILABLE 

with Approved Credit 

We honor School, University and qualified 
business P.O.’s — also Accounts may be set 
up on credit approval — for more information 
call [213] 675-2381. 

*2SSm £ 3 # 


IBM COMPATIBLE PRODUCTS 

PLANTRONICS 


L.D.C. 

LOTUS 123 Low Low 

SYMPHONY Priced 

AST 

SIX PAC PLUS (1 Ser/1 Par Port, 

Clock w/0 memory]. $239 

SIX PAC PLUS [1 Ser/1 Par Port, 

Clock & 64K exp. to 384K] 249 

SIX PAC PLUS [ 1 Ser/1 Par Port, 

Clock & 384K Memory]. 409 

I/O PLUS [1 Ser & 1 Clock].129 

I/O PLUS (1 Serf 1 Par & Clock) .165 

MEGA PLUS [64K].269 

MEGA PAC [1 28K].269 

MEGA PAC [256K].349 

OTHER A9T BOARDS AVAILABLE 
CALL FOR PRICES 

DUADRAM 

COLOR 1.$199 

COLOR 2 .Call 

QUADBOARDS . Call 

HERCULES 

MONOCHROME [Hi Res Graph Card)$329 
COLOR CARD.199 

TECHMAR 

GRAPHICS MASTER [Runs Mono & 

Color, High Res in Both Modes $459 

STB 

GRAPHICS (PLUS) II Supports Both 
Color and Mono Display. You’ll get 
50% faster flicker-free scrolling 
over IBM’s color graphics board. 

Call for more information. $339 

PC PEACOCK 

COLOR BOARD with Parallel Port $209 

MEMORY UPGRADES 

4164 [9 Chips].$37 


COLOR PLUS .339 

OTHER BOARDS AVAILABLE 
CALL FOR LOWEST PRICES! 

KEYTRONICS 

5151 Keyboard w/Sep Num. Pad Call 
5150 Keyboard. Call 

EVEREX 

GRAPHICS EDGE.$389 

VUTEK 

COLOR PLUS. $239 

PERSYST BOARDS 

MONO DISPLAY.$189 

MONO DISPLAY w/Parallel Port .... 199 
BOB BOARD.479 

100% IBM PRODUCTS 

IBM CARDS 

MONO CARD w/Parailel Port]. . $199 

COLOR CARD.189 

IBM MONITORS 

MONOCHROME MONITOR.229 

COLOR MONITOR. Call 

IBM 

DOS 2.1 ..$58 

DOS 3.0. Call 

PRINTER PAR PORT.74 

IBM to PRINTER CABLE [6 foot]... $18 

IBM UPGRADES 

64K.$29 

1 28K.59 


















ft* 




jft' - &»*>• 

Uov* ****&*** 

ra^'vVpS- ^0*** «*>\ e 










































Customer Service (801) 972-2739 
Sales (Utah) (801) 972-2717 
Sales (Outside Utah) (800) 545-2633 


GSL 

COMPUTER 


Retail and Mail Orders 
1780 West 2300 South 
Salt Lake City, Utah 84119 

Prices subject to change without notice. 


IBM PC JR SYSTEMS 


PCjr-1 Enhanced Model. $799 

Includes 128K RAM (expands to 512K) 1 ea 360K 
Floppy. 2 ea Cart Slots. New Kybd 

PCjr-2 Entry Model . $499 

Includes 64K RAM (expands to 512K) 2 ea Cart 
Slots. New Kybd 
PCjr-3 All features of 

“Enhanced Model Plus. $1239 

IBM Color Monitor 

Free Software includes Basic Cartridge. Word 
Processor and DOS 2 1 
PCjr-4 All features of 

"Enhanced Model Plus. $1499 

IBM Color Monitor and Internal Modem Free 
Carrying Case and Software 


PCjr ACCESSORIES 



list 

our price 

Color Display 

$429 

$365 

Printer Adapter 

$99 

$87 

Compact Printer (Thermal) 

$175 

$160 

Half Height 360K 

Disk Drive 

$480 

$399 

Serial Adapter Cable 

$25 

$23 

Color Display Cable 

$20 

$18 

Keyboard Cord 

$20 

$18 

TV Connector 

$30 

$28 

Carrying Case 

S60 

$55 

Game Control Adapter 

$45 

$41 

Joystick 

$40 

$36 

Hands on Basic 

Si 7 50 

$16 

Basic Cartridge 

$75 

$70 

Internal Modem 

$199 

$175 

Mouse 

$195 

$175 

Additional Memory 

$295 

$250 


PC JR. MEMORY BOARDS 


Impulse 110 Jr. Memory Cards 

has 220K RAM expandable to 512K. Par port, clock. 
RAM disk & spooler 


with 64K. $239 

with 128K. $279 

with 256K.$399 

with 512K. $599 


DISK DRIVES 



1 

2 

10 

CDC 9409 DS/DD 360K 

165 

160 

149 

MIT M-4853 1/2 HGT 

SHUGART SA455L DS/DD 360K 

169 

159 

140 

5" 1/2 HGT 

155 

145 

140 

TANDON TM100-1A SS/DD 160K 



5" Full Size 

150 

140 

130 

TANDON TM100-2A DS/DD 360K 



5" Full Size 

TANDON TM-101-4 Quad 720K 

155 

145 

140 

5" Full Size 

TEAC FD55B DS/DD 360K 

280 

270 

260 

1/2 H 

TEAC FD55F Quad 720K 

135 

129 

119 

1/2 H 

169 

159 

149 


DISK DRIVE CABINETS 


8 CABINETS 


III DTL-002 Holds 2 ea 

8 Thinlme W'PS . $169 

III FDE-002 2 ea 8 Std Size 

Horizontally w/P S . $189 

OTC DDC88V28 Holds 2 ea 8" Std 
Size/Vert w/PS . $289 

5V4" CABINETS 

HD5-001 - w/P S for 2 Thinlme Hard Disk .. $189 
HD5-002 - w/P S for 2 Full Size Hard Disk 

or Tape Back-up . $209 

JMR DDC5H w/PS Horiz for 1 ea 

Std Size. S55 

P C DDC5V w/PS Vert for 1 ea 

Std Size. $55 

P C DDC55V w P S Vert for 2 ea 
Std Size. S85 

SLIMLINE 5'A" CABINET 

JMR DDC55H 1 / 2 w ' P S Horiz for 2 ea 

1/2 HGT.$75 

P C DDC55V l/2w'PS Vert for 2 ea 


PRINTERS 


Daisy writer 2000 48K Buffer. 20 to 

40 CPS Ltr Oual .$999 

Diablo 620 API (25CPS) .$749 

Diablo 630 API (40CPS) . $1549 

Diablo 630 ECS/IBM or API . $1649 

Epson FX-80 (160 CPS - 10 - 

Graphtrax/ Tractor).$399 

Epson FX-100 (160 CPS - 15" - 

Graphtrax/Tractor).$649 

Juki 6100 (18 CPS - Diablo Compatible 

Daisywheel) .$419 

Juki 6300 (40 CPS - 16 - 3K Buffer 

Upgrade to 15K).$799 

Okidata 82a (120CPS-10").$319 

Okidata 83a (120CPS - 15") .$569 

Okidata 92a (160CPS - 10") .$399 

Okidata 93a (160CPS - 15") .$649 

Okidata 84p (200CPS - 15") .$729 

Okidata 84S (200CPS - 15") .$849 

Okidata 2350P . $1895 

Okidata 2410P . $1895 

Panasonic 1091 (120 CPS - Logic 
Seeking Head - Runs Faster than 


FX-80-Par Port - Double Strike 

Switch - with Tractor . $299 


C.ITOH 8510A Pro-Writer 1 or 

Image Writer . $339 

Diablo D-25(NEW)/25 CPS . $595 

Epson JX-80/ 160 CPS/7 Color . $579 

Epson LQ1500/ Par/Letter Quality. $1249 

Panasonic KXP 1092 .$449 

180 CPS/33 CPS Corres. 

Toshiba P-1340/ 112 CPS/54CPS 

Letter Quality . $695 

Toshiba P-1351 

(192CPS /120CPS Ltr). $1299 


PRINTER ACCESSORIES 


Daisywriter 2000 B1-D1 Tractor . $210 \ 


Diablo 620 Tractor . $189 

Diablo 630 Tractor . $210 


Juki 6100 Tractor . $139 

Juki 6100 Serial Interface. $65 

Okidata 82/92 Tractor. $60 

Okidata Serial Interface w/2K 

Buffer (92 & 93) . $129 

Okidata Okigraph I .$55 

Okidata Okigraph II. $60 

Star Gemini 10X or 15X Serial Board 

w/4K Buffer . $129 

Toshiba 1351 Tractor Feed. $195 


PRINTER SWITCHER 


Allows you to switch 
from letter quality to Dot Matrix 
by flip of switch 

SCN-2/Two Position Centronics Par 

to Centronics Par. 

SCN-4/Four Position Cen Par 

to Cen Par . 

SRS-2/Two Position Serial to Serial 
SRS-4/Four Position Serial to Serial . . . 


CABLES 


IBM to Par Cable. 

Centronics to Centronics 

RS232 Serial (Specify) . 

Columbia to Par . 

IBM Add-on Drive (DC37 Conn) 
Disk Drive Cable 5" or 8" 
Y-Splitter Cable . 


DISKETTES 


Lifetime Warranty 


5V4"SS/DD . $13.75/10-100 for $13.00 ea. 

5V«" DS/DD (IBM) . $24.00/10-100 for $18.00 ea. 


DISK STORAGE 

Flip N' File 25 . . . $9.95 




SYSTEMS 


Compaq Portable 256K/2ea 360K F D. $2295 

Compaq Desk Pro 2 

256K/2 ea 360K F D. $2295 

Columbia 1600-1 $1995 


. . $22 
S24 
. . $16 
. $28 
. $34 
$26 
$7.95 


. $99 

$139 

S89 

$129 


SANYO PRODUCTS 


MBC 555-2 - 128K RAM (Expands to 256K) 
2 ea DS/DD 1/2 HGT Drive, Par port, 
Speaker and joystick port, Display, 
Keyboard & Following Software 
Wordstar Mailmerge 

Easywriter Spellstar 

Calcstar Infostar 


MS-DOS 2 11 $1089 

SANYO DRIVE UPGRADE 

Double Your Storage by Adding 
2 ea Teac FD55B with software 

for only. $339 

Sanyo Serial Port .$65 

128K Memory Expansion for Sanyo . $69 

RGB Cable .$19.95 

Copylink Software (US Digital 
for Modem). $89 

RGB MONITOR 

13" (460x240) . $289 


APPLE PRODUCTS 


16K RAM Card . $30 

Grappler . $119 

Grappler 16K . $179 

ALSCPM3.0. $199 

ALS Printermate . $60 

ALSZ-Engine . $139 

Viewmax 80 (2 or 2*). $149 

Viewmax 80E (W/64K) . $139 

Micro-SCl A2 Drive . $189 

Micro-SCI A2 Controller . $69 

Apple 2C Drive Adapter . $21.95 

Apple 2C Serial Cable . $21.95 

Apple 2C Par Interface . $89 


QT PRODUCTS/S-100 


QT 8 MAINFRAME 

• Provision for any 2 8 drives (hard or floppy) 


Desk Top Version 

QTC-MF DD6 (6 Slot MB).$575 

QTC-MF DD8 (8 Slot MB).$625 

QTC-MF DD12 (12 Slot MBl.$675 


All mainframes have EMI filter. 2 AC outlets. 15 ea 
DB25 2ea 50pm.2ea 34 pm. lea Centromc cutouts 
power supply for 8 MF (-5V1A/ -5V5A/ 8V14A/ 
•16V3A/ -24V5A) 


CARD CAGES/MOTHERBOARDS 


*IEEE-696-No termination required 


w/card bare card 


Slots 

Bare Bd 

A T 

cage 

cage 

4 

$20 

15% 

15% 

$20 

6 

$25 

15% 

15% 

$22 

8 

$30 

15% 

15% 

$31 

12 

$35 

15% 

15% 

$41 

18 

S50 

15% 

15% 

$50 

22 

$65 

15% 

— 

$75 


All card cages will accommodate a 4 fan 
Add $20 00 for 1 fan - Add $30 00 for 2 fans 


CLOCK/CALENDAR 


S-100«Time in hrs. mm. seceAM/PM or Military 
FormateDate in Mo. Day. Yr, Day of Week & Leap 
Year recognitions hard mterrups (1024 Hz. 1 Hz 1 
mm.1 hr)*On board battery (will last 14 mos w/no 


power on) 

QTC-CCS-BB (S-100) . $45 

QTC-CCS-A (A T) for S-100. $110 


QT/COMPUTIME BOARD SET 


Best Bare Board Set Available 

QTC-SBC 2/4 CPU (SBC 880) 

QTC-EXP III 256K (CT256) Memory bd./ 
Expandable to 1 MG 
QTC-FDC 5/8 Floppy disk controller 
Bare Board Set . $175 

1) Includes manuals & assembly instructions 

2) Parts available 3) Monitor & BIOS available 


Drives .$75 


TOLL FREE 1-800-545-2633 


• Inquiry 125 









































































































































9 YEARS IN COMPUTER MAIL ORDER 

GSL COMPUTER 
TOLL FREE 1-800-545-2633 


All prices for MC, VISA, AMEX or Pre-pay customers only. Call for P.O. Prices. 

Terms: 

We accept MC, Visa (3% handling charge on AMEX only), Wire transfer, and Purchase Orders from 
qualified firms. All returns without RMA are subject to 20% restocking charge. Utah residents pay 
5.75% sales tax. Call for freight charges. Prices subject to change and are in U.S. Currency only. 

MINIMUM ORDER *15.00 

UPS Red Label 1 day delivery UPS Surface Min. 3 to 10 day delivery 
UPS Blue Label 3 day delivery _ 


IBM SYSTEMS 


IBM PC-1 Includes 64K, RAM, 

1 ea. 360K FD, KB $1449 

IBM PC-2 64K RAM, 2 ea 
360K FD, KB . $1599 

IBM PC-22 256K RAM, 2 ea 
360K FD, KB . $1699 


MEMORY BOARDS 


AST 6 Pak * w/64K (Expands to 384K) has Par, 

Serial. Clk, RAM Disk, Spooler .$259 

AST 6 Pak* W/384K Plus all 

above features. $449 

P.C. WARE “256K RAM w/0 RAM . $119 

P.C. WARE “256K RAM” w/64K RAM . $159 

“Quadboard 384" w/64K (Expands to 384K) 
has Par, Serial. Clk, RAM Disk, 

Spooler, Game Port . $269 

“Quadboard 384" W/384K and all 
above features. $459 


MONITORS 


Customer Service (801) 972-2739 
Sales (Utah) (801) 972-2717 
Sales (Outside Utah) (800) 545-2633 

Inquiry 125 


IBM Color Display. $569 

IBM Monochrome Monitor . $249 

Amdek 300A. $149 ea. 

Amdek 310A. $169 ea. 


NEW — QUIMAX MONITORS 


Hi-Res, 14" Screen Tilt & Swivel 

DM14A (Amber) .$169 

DM14G (Green) .$149 

PX-IV (4) - Hi-Res RGB w/Switch 
to convert to green for Word Processing 

w/Tilt & Swivel Base .$449 

(Better than Princeton HX-12) 


FLOPPY DISK CONTROLLERS 


FDC (Controls up to 4 ea 5"). $119 

Maynard “Sandstar” FDC . $219 

(5" or 8” w/Ability to add Par, Serial, 

Clock. Game Port or Hard Disk Modules) 


ALPHA-OMEGA HARD DISK 

TURBO 20 20MG Hard Disk w/Cont. 

. . $1795 

TURBO 10 10MG Hard Disk w/Cont. 

TURBO 10T 10MG Hard Disk w/Controller 

. . $749 

and Tape Backup . 

. . $1495 

COGITO 10MG Hard Disk . 

... $539 

COGITO 20MG Hard Disk . 

.. $1199 


IBM PC-3 256K RAM, 2 ea 
360K FD, IBM Mono Display, 

IBM Mono Card, KB . $2129 

IBM PC-33 256K RAM, 2 ea 360K FD, 

Color Bd. Monitor, KB . $2049 

IBM PC-4 256K RAM, 2 ea 360K FD, 
Everex Graphics Edge, 

Quimax PX4, KB . $2549 


MEMORY UPGRADES 


IBM UP-GRADE FOR PC 

INCLUDES 9 EA 4164-200NS 
FOR EXPANSION ON ALL PRODUCTS 
WITH PARITY 

$28.00 PER SET $25.00 5 OR MORE 
IBM MEMORY UPGRADE FOR AT 

9 EA 4128-200 NS (256K) 

$229.00 

COMPAQ MEMORY (256K) UPGRADE 

9 ea 256K CHIP (200NS) 

$229.00 


PC POWER SUPPLIES 


HDPC-X Pwr - External Power Supply (130w) 

for Hard Disk Add-ons w/fan. $159 

HDPC-I Pwr - Internal Power Supply 

(130w to Replace 63w) . $169 

NOTE! “All hard disks above 10MB 
require 130w power supply" 

KB 5151 (Same as IBM Selectric) . $199 

IBM Keyboard. $119 

Everex. $319 

Int’l Instrumentation. $329 

* Controls any Winchester Tech HD 

* 2-1 lnterleave/3 times faster than XT 


INTERNATIONAL INSTRUMENTATION 


10, 15, 22 and 30 MG Hard Disk 
Subsystems 

Plug in controller and have instant Mass Storage 1 


• 3 times faster than XT • 

• Fully PC or XT compatible 


Boot from hard disk 


Size 

Internal 

Exteri 

10 MB 

$749 

$889 

15 MB 

$989 

$1089 

22 MB 

$1349 

$1529 

33 MB 

$1769 

$1889 


10 MG TAPE STREAMER 

• 10 MG Streamer Tape back-up • Back-up in 8 min. 

Internal Stream 1/2 HGT.$899 

External Stream (w/Power Supply 

and case) (1/2 HGT). $995 

10.38 MG Tape Cartridge.$29 


The Great Salt Lake 

Computer Company, Inc. 


SEND FOR NEW CATALOG 


1 


IBM HARD DISK SYSTEMS 

IBM XT 128K RAM, 10 MB 

1 

Hard Disk, & Keybd . 

$3495 | 

PC-10 256K RAM, 10MG H D . 1 ea 


360K FD and Keybd . 

$2569 R 

PC-10/2 256K RAM. 10MG HD, 2 ea 1 /2 Hgt 


360K FD and Kevhd .. . 

$2769 ¥ 

I PC-10/2M 256K RAM, 10 MG HD, 2 ea 360K FD, 1 

| Quimax DM14A, IBM Monocard, Keybd ... 

$3149 | 

IBM-AT SYSTEMS 

3 TIMES SPEED OF XT 


IBM-AT (Base Model) includes 256K RAM 


1.2 MB F D„ Clk/Cal, 8 Slots, 


Keylock, KB. 

$3900 

IBM-AT (Enhanced) includes 512K RAM 


1.2 MB FD, 20 MB Fixed Drive. 


| Ser/Par Port, 8 Slots, Keylock. KB. 

$5700 

! AT add-on drives 


20MG Hard Disk. 

$1295 

30MG Hard Disk. 

$1695 

1.2 MG F.D. w/Rails . 

$329 

360K F.D. w/Rails . 

$229 

AT ADD-ON MEMORY BOARD 


* STB "Rio Grande ' W/128K . 

$359 

Expands to 1.5MG 


Has Par/Ser/Optional Serial & GP 


* STB "Grand Byte" W/128K . 

$299 

Expands to 2 MG 


MODEMS 


Anchor Mark XII - External-Direct Connect- 
Hayes Commands Includes Serial Cable- 

Auto Answer & Dial .$239 

Hayes 1200 - External-Direct Connect .$479 

Hayes 1200B Internal for IBM 

with Software .$399 

Popcorn XI00 External 300/1200. Auto Answer/ 

Auto Dial (20% more features than 

Hayes 1200) .ONLY $319 

Pro-Modem 1200 - External-Direct Connect- 
w/Clock - Hayes Commands - 
Auto Answer and Dial.$329 


VIDEO CARDS 


MONO CARDS 

IBM Monochrome w/Par Port. $229 

HERCULES Graphics Card . $329 

PERSYST Monochrome w/Par Port . $199 

COLOR CARDS 

IBM Color Graphics . $219 

AST Monograph w/Par, Ser, Clk. CALL 

EVEREX “Graphics Edge 
Runs Mono & RGB Color at same time (640X200) 

16 Color/Hi-Res Mono/Par Port 80x25 

or 132x44 . $399 

HERCULES Color. $199 

PARADISE "Multi-Display" w/Par . $319 

Paradise "Modular Card". $345 

Modular A . $88 

Modular B . $240 

STB “Graphic's Plus 2" 

Composite. Mono. RGB/50% Faster Scroll/Flicker 
Free/(320x200) 16/(640x200) 4/(640x352) 

Mono. $349 

TECMAR "Graphics Master" 

128K RAM/(640x400) 16/(720x480) 4 

RGB and Mono. $499 


IBM MISCELLANEOUS 

IBM Memory Upgrade Kit (64K). 

. $32 

P.C. Ware Serial Board . 

. $79 

P.C. Ware Par Board. 

. $75 

P.C. Ware Clock/Calendar. 

. $59 

Math Co-Processor - 8087 . 

$149 

IBM DOS 2 1 . 

. $57 

! IBM DOS 3.0 . 

. $60 

LOTUS 1-2-3 . 

$299 


Retail and Mail Orders 
1780 West 2300 South 
Salt Lake City, Utah 84119 

Prices subject to change without notice. 

















































































































IDEAL FOR OEM MANUFACTURERS, UNIVERSITIES, 
RESEARCH LABS ETC. 




DISPLAY 

TELECOMMUNICATIONS 

CORPORATION 


4100 SPRING VALLEY ROAD 
SUITE 400 
DALLAS, TX 75234 
(214) 991-1644 


TERMS: We accept cash, checks, money 
orders, or purchase orders from qualified 
firms and institutions. Prices and availability 
subject to change without notice. Shipping 
and handling charges via UPSground 50C/lb 
UPS air $1.00/lb. Minimum charge $3.00 


*IBM and IBM PC are trademarks of International Business Machines 

458 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


©1984 Display Telecommunications Corporation 

Inquiry 94 


COMPLETE 

Horizontal Return Key 
Caps Lock and 
Num. Lock Indicators 
Enter Key for Numeric Keypad 


ONLY 


$14995 


Bus Expansion Slot 


Fully Assembled and Tested with One Year 
Limited Warranty 


Allows External 
Access To PC Bus 


OEM AND DEALER 
QUANTITY DISCOUNTS AVAILABLE: 


r ONLY > 

$ggii 


EXCLUSIVE 
FLIP-TOP-CASE” 

Overcomes Problems 
With PC Case 


STANDARD 
POWER SUPPLY 


Mounts Standard 
Half or Full Height 
Floppy Disk 
or Hard Disk Drives 


IDEAL FOR MEGA-BOARD ™ XT OR ANY IBM-PC PC-XT 
_ COMPATIBLE BOARDS _ 


EASYACCESSU 

FLIP-TOP-CASE ■ 
OPENS FOR EASY 
ACCESS TO INSIDE!! 


THE ULTIMATE PC COMPATIBLE ENCLOSURE] 


Blank Label Inset 
For Your Company Or 
University Name Here 


Rugged Heavy Gauge Steel Construction 


ADVANCED KEYBOARD 


FEATURES: 


































r #1 


CHOICE OF MAJOR OEM MANUFACTURERS, UNIVERSITIES, 
RESEARCH LABS ETC a thoroughly field proven design. 

c HIGH VOLUME PRODUCTION ENGINEERED. 





ONLY! 


Evaluation 
Board Kit 


• FULL IBM PC-XT* COMPATIBILITY! 

• FULL MEGA-BYTE RAM CAPACITY 


ON MOTHERBOARD! 


THOUSANDS 

SOLD 

WORLD WIDE! 


i 

Eight Compatible 
I/O Interface 
Connectors 

(Full PC compatible) 
(compatible with all 
IBM-PC* plug-in cards) 


□ MEGA-BOARD™ — XT 


B BARE BOARD KIT.$ 99.95 

ASSEMBLED AND TESTED 

SOCKET KIT.$199.95 

(LESS IC’S) (FULLY SOCKETED) 

□ ASSEMBLED AND TESTED — 

COMPLETE.$499.95 

(INCLUDES USERS MANUAL 
AND MEGA-BIOS ROM) 

□ USERS MANUAL WITH THEORY OF 
OPERATION, SCHEMATICS, BLOCK 
DIAGRAM, APPLICATION 

NOTES.$ 19.95 

□ MEGA-BIOS™ ROM (2764) FULLY XT 
COMPATIBLE, MS-DOS, 

PC DOS.$ 29.95 

□ HARD TO GET PARTS. CALL 


ORDER NOW!!! 


Fast, friendly service 


FREE! Displaytel™ 
Exclusive. 

Our Commitment to 

Microcomputer 

Education! 


Intel 8088 
Data Book with each 
Mega-Board'“Order! 


CALL 214-991-1644 


< 100 % * 
iATISFACTlOf 
GUARANTEE 


Immediate shipment! 

Most instock items shipped 
same or next day! 


10 Day money back guarantee 
if not completely satisfied! 


Hardware Reset 

(Overcomes reset flaw 
in PC) 


Power Connector 

(Full IBM* pinout 
compatible) 


i 

** 

8088 Processor 


(Same as PC) 


Mega-Board 


Wire Wrap Area 

To facilitate special custom 
applications! 


Evaluation Board Kit! 

(Blank board with full assembly 
instructions and parts list.) 

Includes highest quality PC board 
with gold plating, silk screen, 
solder mask 


Board Size 10.5 inch X 13.5 inch 


I 

Special J1 
Interface 

(Allows horizontal mount¬ 
ing of compatible expan¬ 
sion cards for easy bus 
expansion and custom 
configuring) (Board has 
62 pin gold plated compat¬ 
ible connector) 


_I 

Extended ROM 
Capability 

(Runs all compatible PC 
ROMS) (Jumper program¬ 
mable to accommodate all 
popular 8K, 16K, 32K and 
64K ROM chips and NEW 
EE ROMS! VPP power pin 
available for EP ROM 
burning!) (External 
VPP voltage required) 


Full Mega-Byte Ram Capacity! 
On board! 

(With parity) 

□ 256K Bytes using 64K chips 

□ 1 Mega Bytes using 256K chips 


8087 Numeric 
Processor 

(Same as PC) 


Peripheral 
Support Circuits 

(Same as PC) 


Speaker/Audio 

Port 

(Same as PC) 


Configuration 

Switches 

(Same as PC) 


Standard Key¬ 
board Interface 

(Full PC compatible) 


DEALERS AND OEM MANUFACTURERS 
QUANTITY DISCOUNTS AVAILABLE 




DISPLAY 

TELECOMMUNICATIONS 

CORPORATION 


4100 SPRING VALLEY ROAD 
SUITE 400 
DALLAS. TX 75234 
(214) 991-1644 


TERMS: We accept cash, checks, money 
orders, or purchase orders from qualified 
firms and institutions. Prices and availability 
subject to change without notice. Shipping 
and handling charges via UPS ground 50C/lb. 
UPS air $1.00/lb. Minimum charge $3.00 


‘IBM and IBM PC are trademarks of International Business Machines 


©1984 Display Telecommunications Corporation 


Inquiry 94 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 459 




TELETYPE 


MONITOR 


HECRGB+ jgkmJ t 
COLOR *2S9 

















































































































































California Digital 

17700Figueroa Street • CarsonCalifornia90248 


SEC 

color fyCQ 

MONITOR *** 



The NEC JC-1401D is a 13' medium/high resolution RGB monitor 
suitable for use with the Sanyo MBC-550/555 or the IBM/PC The 
monitor features a resolution of 400 dots by 240 lines. Colors available 
are Red. Green. Blue. Yellow, Cyan. Magenta. Black and White 
These monitors are currently being used in applications far more 
critical than microcomputers 

The NEC monitor carries the Litton-Monroe label and was originally 
scheduled for use in their Office of the Future equipment A change 
in Monroe s marketing strategy has made these units excess mven 
tory which were sold to California Digital We are offering these prime 
new RGB monitors at a fraction of their original cost Sanyo com 
patible NEC-1401 /S. IBM/P C Computer compatible NEC-1401 /PC 

MONITORS 


BMC 12A green phosphor 15 MH/ compos* video 
BMC 12 niah resoluitafi 20MH* 

Amdek 300G 12 green phosphor 

Amdek 300A 12 amber phos hi resolution 

Amdek 310A designed lor IBM PC amber 

Zenith ZVM122 Amber Phosphor 12 40 80 column switch 

Zenith ZVM123 green phosphor 12 40 80 column switch 

NEC JB1201 green phosphor 18 MH; compos* video 

NEC JB1 260 commercial grade composn 

Conrac 9 open frame requires ho n sync & I2v supply 

COLOR 

NEC JC140ID Medium High 13 RGB 

BMC AU9191 U Color com posit video with sound 

BMC 9191M RGB designed tor use wrth the IBM computer 

NEC JC 1203DM RGB color monitor 

NEC JC 1215 color composn 

Zenith ZVM135 RGB & composite suitable tor IBM PC 
Amdek Color 113 composn video 
Amdek Color II -13 RGB hi resolution 
Amdek Color III - 13 RGB medium resokitaon 
Princeton HX 12 RGB IBM PC compatible 


BMC 12A 
BMC 12EN 
AMK 300G 
AMK 300A 
AMK 310A 
ZTH 122 
ZTHZ123 
NEC JB1201 
NEC JB1260 
CONBW9 


NEC-1401 X 
BMC 9191 
BMC 9191M 
NEC 1203 
NEC JC1215 
ZTH-Z135 
AMK 100 
AMK-200 
AMK 300 
PRNHX12 


78 95 
119 00 
128 95 
138 95 
158 95 
89 95 
89 95 
15900 
119 00 
59 00 


259 00 
238 95 
379 00 
699 00 
339 00 
475 00 
299 00 
41995 
359 95 
478 95 


PRINTERS 


MATRIX PRINTERS 


Star Gemini 10X 120 char sec 
Star Gemini 15X, 100char/sec 15 paper 
Star Gemini Delta 10. 160 Char/sec 
Star Coe* 80FT friction & tractor 
Toshiba P1351 192 char/ sec letter quality 
Okidata 82A senal & parallel 9’ i paper 
Okidala 92A parallel interlace 160 char/sec 
Okidata 83A & parallel 15 paper 
Okidata 84A & parallel 15 paper 
Epson RX-8010 120 Char/sec 
Epson FX80 10 160 char /sec with graphirax 
Epson FX 10015 160 char/sec with graphtra* 

Epson LQ1500.15 corespondence quality 
Epson JX80 Color printer 
Anade* 9501B high speed with graphics 
Anadex9620B 200char sec parl&serial 
Prowriter 8510 parallel 9' ? paper 
Prowriter II. parallel 15 paper graphics 
Dataproducts B-600-3. band punter 600 LPM 
Prmtronix P300 high speed printer 300 lines per minute 
Printroni* P600 ultra high speed 600 lines per minute 

WORD PROCESSING PRINTERS 

NEC-7710 
NEC-7730 
NEC-3550 

C20char<sec pari NEC 2050 

Silver Reed EX^SOO 14 char-sec par i interlace 
Silver Reed EXP550 17 Char/sec par I interlace 
Diablo 630 40 char/sec serial 
Diablo 620 proportional spacing, hor* & 

Juki 6100 18char/sec SPECIAL 
Brother HR1A serial interlace 
Starwnter F10 serial. 40 char/sec 


STR-G10X 

STR-G15X 

STR-D10 

VST-C80FT 

TOS-1351 

OK I-82 A 

OKI-92A 

OKI-83A 

OKI-84A 

EPSRX80 

EPS-FX80 

EPS FX100 

EPS-LQ1500 

EPS-JX80 

ADX-9501B 

ADX-9620B 

PRO-851 OP 

PR0 2P 

DPS B600 

PTXP300 

PTX-P600 


259 00 
365 00 
399 00 
179 00 
1495 00 
329 00 
399 00 
559 00 
929 00 
259 00 
439 00 
629 00 
1179 00 
579 00 
1029 00 
1129 00 
359 00 
689 00 
6985 00 


NEC7710 55 char/second, senal interface 
NEC7730 55 char/sec pai I interface 
NEC3550 popular punter designed tor the IBM/PC 
NEC2050 designed lor IBM PC20ct 
- ed EXP500.1 


SRD-EXPS00 
SRD-EXP550 
DBL-630 
tab 20cps DBL-620 
JUK-6100 
BTH-HR1S 
PRO-F10S 


TERMINALS 

Freedom 100. split screen detatchable keyboard LIB-F100 495 00 

Oume 102 green phosphor terminal QUM 1 02 539 00 

Ampe* Dialogue 1 25 green screen APX-Di25G 675 00 

Ampex Dialouge 1 75 amber screen two page, tunc keys APX-Di 75A 719 00 

Wyse 50. 14 green phosphor WYS-SO 595 00 

Wyse 300. Eight color dsplay split screen WYS-300 1159 00 

Zenith 29 terminal VT52 compatible detatch ble keyboard ZTH-Z29 765 00 
Tele video 910 Plus block mode TVI-910P 575 00 

Tele video 925 detatchable keyboard 22 function keys TVI-925 759 00 

Tetevideo 950. graphic char split screen. 22 func TV1-950 950 00 

Televideo970. 14 green. 1 32 column, European TVI-970 1095 00 



5795 00 


1795 00 
1795 00 
1599 00 
995 00 
459 00 
659 00 
1765 00 
775 00 
429 00 
695 00 
1125 00 



The Teletype peripherals are continuous heavy duty communi¬ 
cation equipment that have recently come oft lease from a Cado 
Computer customer It is seldom that California Digital becomes 
involved in the marketing of USED products but we felt that 
these peripherals represented such an exceptional value that 
we had to offer this equipment to our customers. 

The full character chain printer is capable of printing text in 
excess of 300 lines per minute This printer, long used in high 
speed mini-computer applications, will provide the small busi¬ 
ness user with good quality multi-part printouts at speeds that 
can not be attained by dot matrix printers 
This unit also has a four channel vertical forms feed controller 
that allows for quick change of various form lenghts. The Tele¬ 


type Model 40 printer has a proprietary serial Teletype SSI 
interface and DIP switches are provided tor setting baud rates to 
9600 The printer requires special support software when con 
necting directly to a mainframe, call for technical support 
The Model 40 CRT terminal has a RS-232 and current loop 
serial interface as well as a printer port that supports the Model 
40 printer. This terminal features block mode, full screen editing 
as well as DC1 /DC3 select capabilities 

All Teletype equipment is fully inspected by our engineering 
department before shipment These peripherals are shipped 
freight collect by truck 

Teletype Printer $795 • Model 40 CRT Terminal $395 
• Both printer and terminal $1065 • 


The Eagle IIE/2 Computer features a 12 non-glare green phosphor 
CRT typewriter style keyboard with separate numeric duster This 
unit provides two 51/4 drives for a combined storage capacity of 780 
K Byte The computer contains a 4Mhz Z-80A. DMA disk interface, 
two RS-232C serial ports. Centronics printer interface along with an 
auxiliary parallel port 

Software included consists of ULTRACALC electronic spread sheet. 
SPELLBINDER word processor. CBASIC2. CP/M 2 2. and an exclu- 
sive Eagle menu driven utility package 

These units are all factory new and are being offered far below their 
suggested price of S2495 This is your opportunity to purchase a 
complete CP. M system for only S895 


PROMETHEUS 

ProModem 1200 



The Prometheus Promodem 1200 is best value that we have seen in a 
300/1200 baud modem This Hayes compatible modem features 
completely unattended operation, auto answer/auto dial and even 
includes redial number when busy Internal diagnostics makes the 
Promodem 1 200 an easy modem to install Help commands, real time 
clock and internal speaker add to the ease of use of this unit 
An optional processor accessory allows bauery back up. extra mem¬ 
ory space for storing additional phone numbers, messages received, 
and can act as a transfer buffer when exchanging programs 
The Alphanumeric display option allows messages saved to be dis¬ 
played when they were received, diagnostic test results numbers in 
the directory, as well as modem status 


31900 
259 00 
75 00 
479 00 
429 00 
229 00 
279 00 
199 00 
339 00 
279 00 
229 00 
439 00 
389 00 
595 00 
169 00 
21900 
359 00 
11500 


CTS212AH 1200 baud auto dial 

Signalman Mark 12 1200 baud Hayes compatible 

Signalman Mark t direct connect with terminal cable 

Hayes Sman Modem 1200 baud auto answer auto <*al 

Hayes 12006 tor use with the IBM PC. 1200 baud 

Hayes Smartmodem 300 baud only auto answer auto ck. 

Hayes Mictomodem It 103 Apple deed connect 

Hayes Chronograph time & date 

Prometheus 1200 super features 

Prometheus 1200B internal PC 

Team 1200 Hayes Compatible 

U S Robotics 212A 300 1200 baud, auto dial /answer 

U S Robotics Password 300 1200 baud 

Pennt 300,1200 industrial quality 

Universal Data 103LP ime power answer & originate 

Universal Data 202 1200 baud halt duplex only 

Universal Data 212LP lull 1200 baud duplex line power 

Novation J Cal direct connect, auto answer 


CTS212AH 

SGL MK12 

SGlmki 

HYS212AD 

HYS 12006 

HYS-103AO 

HYS MM2 

HYSCHR232 

PRM P1200 

PRM P1200B 

TEM SM1200 

USR-212A 

USR-PW212 

PEN 12AD 

UDS-103LP 

UDS202LP 

UDS-212LP 

NOV-JCAT 


OLYMPIA 

Computer Printer 
and Typewriter 



The Olympia Corporation has jusf released two new typewriters with built in Centronics 
printer interface These word processing pnnters are the ideal answer to your personal 
correspondence needs 

The Compact 2 prints at 14 characters per second and is priced at S459 OLY-C2 The Orbit 
XP. pictured above prints at 10 characters per second and is priced at only S339 OLY- 
XP1 Both machines are equiped with 2 K/ byte printer buffers and a lift off correction key 


Return of a 
Smash Hit Sellout 

moon 

*139 



Compatible with most Radio Shack Color Computer software The world famous Dragon 
computer is now available in the United States Manufactured Dy the Tano Co/p under 
license of the British Broadcasting Company The Dragon comes complete with 64K Byte of 
memory, serial modem port along with a Centronics printer interface This unique micro¬ 
computer features Motorola s advanced 6809E microprocessor and comes standard with 
Microsoft Color Basic, data base manager and a complete word processing package The 
computer outputs color composite video along with R F video that allows the unit to be used 
m conjunction with any color television This is the Ideal low cost computer to be useo with 
any dial up information system such as the Source. Western Union s EasyLmk or any other 
time share service 


Shustait 

604 WINCHESTER 


m 


These 6.7 Megabyte drives are new units recently re¬ 
leased by the Shugart division of Xerox _ 

The Shugart 604 is fully 506 industry compatible. Each drive 
shipment and is supplied with a 90 day warranty SHU-604 



TOLL FREE ORDER UNE 

( 800 ) 421-5041 


TECHNICAL 4 CALIFORNIA 

( 213 ) 217-0500 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 461 























Printers: 

EPSON JX-80 (160cps. 10", 8 colors) BEST PRICE 

EPSON FX-80 (160cps. 10") $425 

EPSON FX-100 (leOcps. 15") $625 

EPSON FX-100 t (160cps, 15 near LQ). $625 

EPSON RX-80 (lOOcps. 10") $245 

EPSON RX-80FT PLUS (lOOcps. 10" w platten. 

near LQ) $295 

EPSON RX-100 (lOOcps. 15' while they last). $425 

EPSON LQ-1500 (LQ dot matnx w par. interface) CALL 

OKIDATA ML92 (160cps. 10"). $425 

OKIOATA ML93 M60cps. 15") $625 

OKIDATA ML84 t 200cps. 15") $725 

OKIDATA PACEMARK 2410 (350cps. 15"). $1995 

GEMINI 10X(120cps 10") $275 

GEMINI 15X (120cps 15 > S395 

DATAPRODUCTS 8010 (180cps. dot matnx. 10"). CALL 

DATAPRODUCTS 8020 (180cps, dot matnx. 15") CALL 

DATAPRODUCTS 8050 <200cps. dot matnx. 15") CALL 

DATAPRODUCTS 8070 (400cps. dot matnx. 15". LQ). CALL 
FLORIDA DATA PRINTERS (High speed, durable) CALL 

TOSHIBA P1340 (LQ dot matnx. 10"). $745 

TOSHIBA PI351 (LQ dot matnx. 15") $1295 

Tl-855 (LQ dot matrix wlont cart) PRICE REDUCTION 
DIABLO 630API (40cps LQ) $1595 

DIABLO 630ECS (192 chars on wheel) $1995 

NEC 2050 (Durable, low cost LQ) BEST PRICE 

NEC 3550 (33cps LQ) NEW LOW PRICE 

NEC 7730 (55cps LQ) NEW LOW PRICE 

NEC 8850 (Fast LQ from the people setting standards) CALL 
C ITOH A10 (New letter quality) CALL 

C ITOH STARWRITER (40cps LQ) $1025 

C ITOH PRINTMASTER (55cps LQ) $1325 

QUME LETTER PRO 20 (New nice) CALL 

QUME SPRINT 1140 (40cps LQ) CALL 

QUME SPRINT 1155 (55cps LQ) CALL 

BROTHER HR-15 (13cps LQ, 10") $395 

BROTHER HR-25 (23cps LQ. 15") $675 

BROTHER HR-35 1 32cps LQ. 15") $895 

COMREX. DVNAX PRINTERS CALL 

CALL FOR ADD-ON TRACTORS A CUT SHEET FEEDERS 


Miscellaneous: 

POLAROID PALETTE 

(Makes hi res slides from PC's) . BEST PRICE 
ORCHID PC TURBO (80186 coprocessor-runs at 8MHz) CALL 
KEYTRONIC 5151 KEYBOARD (Sep cursor keys) $199 

MOUSE SYSTEMS (Optical mouse, runs LOTUS) $139 

MICROSOFT SERIAL OR BUS MOUSE (W'Software) $139 

ISOBAR SURGE PROTECTORS (4 & 8 plug) $49 $69 
POWE R BACK-UP (200 & 425 watts) $269 $499 

MICROFAZER (8-128K pnnt buffer).from $139 

ASHER by QUADRAM (Electronic tickler, more) CALL 

SANTA CLARA PC TERMINAL (Smart terminals plus) CALL 

Diskettes: 

VERBATIM: 

SS/DD Box $24- Case $199 

OS DO Box. $29-Case $249 

FOR DYSAN. MAXELL. 3M.CALL 

Floppy Disk Drives: 

TANDON TM100-2.$179 

SHUGART SA 455-2 $149 

PORTABLE HALF HEIGHTS $159 

CDC FULL HEIGHTS. $169 

Multifunction Boards: 

QUADMEG (at memory up to 4MB RAM). CALL 

QUADBOARD (64K-384K.S.RG.C/C,bracket). $269/459 

QUADPORT (Senai & parallel w/option of 4 

moresenal) CALL 

AST ADVANTAGE (ups ATs RAM to 3MB w/port) CALL 

AST &-FAK (64-384K,S,RC/C.opt G) $269/459 

AST MEGAPLUS (64-512K*.S.&C.opt S.RG.K). from $269 

AST I/O PLUS (S.C/C.opt S.P.G).from $139 

ORCHID BLOSSOM (64-384K S.RC/C. opt PC Net) $249 

TECMAR CAPTAIN (64-384K.S.P.C/C).from $259 

BABY BLUE II (64-256K.Z80B.2S.P.C/C). . from $429 

PERSYST Time Spectrum (64-384K.S. 

P.c/c. 2 yr. wrty) - $279 

NEW PROFIT RAM ELITE & PLUS (64-512K.2S or 

S&RC/C). CALL 

MAYNARD SANDSTAR MODULAR BOARDS.CALL 


Plotters: 

HP7470 & 7475 PLOTTERS.CALL 

HOUSTON INSTRUMENTS (Full Line) CALL 

AMDEK AMPLOT II (8 Pen. does overlays) $499 

Emulation Boards: 

IRMA BY DCA (3278 Terminal Emulation).$895 

IRMALINE (3278 RJE).CALL 

IRMALETTE (Use with Irmaline).CALL 

IRMAPRINT (3287 emulation) CALL 

IRMACOM (3274.3276 Controller. 

3770. 2780, 3780 RJE) . CALL 

FORTE DATA SYSTEM CALL 

TECHLAND BLUE LYNX 3270 & 5251. CALL 

AST PCOX, SNA. BSC. 3780. 5251 . CALL 

Monitors: 

AMDEK COLOR 710(No glare, no flicker ultra 

hi/res) .$579 

AMDEK COLOR 700 (New ultra hi/res RGB).$475 

AMDEK COLOR 600 (New hi/res RGB w/audio) $429 

AMDEK 300 A and G (Amber or green).$149 $139 

AMDEK COLOR 500. 400. 300 (New hi/res RGB) CALL 

AMDEK 31OA (Amber, dark non-glare tube).$169 

PGS SR-12 (690x480 non-interlaced).$599 

PGS HX-12 (690x480 interlaced).$469 

PGS MAX-12 (720x350 mono).CALL 

KIMTRON TERMINALS.BEST PRICE 

WYSE 50,75,100 TERMINALS (Progam fund keys) CALL 
TAXAN, NEC. ZENITH MONITORS.CALL 

Hard Disk Drives: 

PEACHTREE PERIPHERALS 10MB internal & external $895 

PEACHTREE PERIPHERALS P-30 AT A P-50 AT.CALL 

EVEREX10MB internal CALL 

MAYNARD 10MB internal CALL 

MAYNARD 30MB internal $2195 

MAYNARD MAYNSTREAM (Portable tape back-up)... CALL 
MITSUBISHI (10MB & 25MB wlape) .... CALL 

SYSGEN 10MB HARD DISK (w/tape back up) $2396 

SYSGEN 20MB HARD DISK (wlape back up) $2895 

SYSGEN IMAGE 10 minute XT tape back up.$796 

CALL FOR TECMAR, DAVONG, AND TALLGRASS PRICES 


IBM PCs 


IBM PC w/256K. 2 360K drives, controller. 
Monochrome/ Pnnter adapter. Amdek 310A 

$2195 

IBM PC W/256K. 2 360K drives, controller. 
Color/Graphics adapter. HX-12 color monitor 

$2495 

IBM PC W/256K. 2 K ht. 360K drives, 
controller. 10MB hard disk w/auto boot 

$2795 

(These systems are brand new. fully tested and burned in, 
fully warranteed for 90 days AND ARE ALWAYS IN 
STOCK!) 



HARD 

DISKS 

• INTERNAL/LOW POWER 

• EXTERNAL/MASS STORAGE 

• ARCHIVE TAPE BACK-UP 

• REMOVABLE MEDIA 


462 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 258 



































































BUDGET HERO 


Call for an IBM PC system custom enhanced to meet all your business needs. 


Chips: 

64K RAM UPGRADE (Set of 9).$39 

128K RAM (AT Upgrade) BEST PRICE 

256K RAM. BEST PRICE 

8087-3 (High Speed Math). $169 

80287 (AT High Speed Math). CALL 

WE ARE CHIP BROKERS. ASK FOR QUANTITY PRICES 


Modems: 

HAYES 300 baud external $209 

HAYES 1200 (300 or 1200 baud ext). $469 

HAYES 1200B (300 or 1200 baud mt w/soft).$399 

HAYES 2400 (New external, twice the speed!).. CALL 

HAYES Compatibles. CALL 

SIGNALMAN MARK 12 (1200 baud at 300 price) $259 
VENTEL HALF CARDw Crosstalk $429 

BIZCOMP INTELLIMODEMS.BEST PRICE 


Display Cards: 


EVEREX GRAPHIC EDGE 

(Simultaneous color & mono, w ports) $399 
TSENG UltraPAK (132 mono. 

S. P. C/C. opt RAM. FDC. color) $439 

PARADISE MODULAR GRAPHICS CARD (Color 
graphics in mono with mod ports options!) . from $339 
PERSYST BoB (clear text on a color monitor) CALL 

STB GRAPHIX PLUS II (Mono, color, par) $369 

PROFIT MULTIGRAPH (Mono, color, opt par). $369 


TECMAR GRAPHICS MASTER (640x400 - mono) S489 
QUAD COLOR I (Upgrades to hires w Quadcolorll) $199 
HERCULES COLOR CARD (New from old faithful) $179 
AST MonoGraphPlus 

(LOTUS mono, serial, par clock) $399 

PLANTRONICS Colorplus (Hi res w color magic) $379 
IBM PC Enhanced Graphics Adapter CALL 


Software: 

SYMPHONY (New from LOTUS) . BEST PRICE-CALL 

FRAMEWORK (New from ASHTON-TATE). BEST PRICE 
MULTIMATE (Emulates WANG dedicated WP) $279 

SAMNA WORD III (‘ Ultra-WANG ') .$295 

WORDSTAR PRO-PAK (WS/CS/MM/SI/Tutor) $279 
MICROSOFT WORO w/MOUSE 

(4th generation WP) .$289 

VOLKSWRITER DELUXE w/Textmerge.$179 

BANK STREET WRITER.$59 

EASYWRITER II SYSTEM (-writer,-speller.-mailer) CALL 
SUPERCALC 3 (Better graphs than LOTUS) BEST PRICE 
PFS Write. File and Graph . . each $99.Report ... $79 
OPEN ACCESS (Proven Integrated Package) CALL 

dBASE II & III (From Ashton-Tate). $299/$375 

KNOWLEDGEMAN (Version 1.06).$299 

RBASE 4000 & 6000 (Use w clout, report writer) CALL 
POWER BASE (Relational, hierarchical) $279 

CIP (New and fantastic!).CALL 

DAYFLOW (Enhance with REPORTFLO) CALL 

OZ (from Fox & Geller). CALL 

NUTSHELL by Leading Edge.CALL 

LIFEBOAT LATTICE C COMPILER (w/8087 support) $289 
LIFEBOAT LATTICE C-FOOD SMORGASBORD CALL 
MICROSOFT C.BASIC.FORTRAN.PASCAL.COBOL. CALL 

BORLAND TURBO PASCAL & TOOLBOX.CALL 

DIGITAL RESEARCH (All products).CALL 

DOW JONES (All products).CALL 

IUS A/R, A/P, G/L.$299 

OPEN SYSTEMS ACCOUNTING MODULES BEST PRICE 

REAL WORLD ACCOUNTING.CALL 

STATE OF THE ART (G/L.A/R.A/P.INV.PR) BEST PRICE 
BPI GENERAL ACCOUNTING AND MODULES CALL 
DOLLARS AND SENSE by Monogram $119 

MANAGING YOUR MONEY by Tobias/Meca.$129 

HARVARD PROJECT MANAGER BEST PRICE 

HOWARDSOFT TAX PREPARER.BEST PRICE 

MICROTAX CALL FOR PRICE 

DECISION RESOURCES CHART MASTER.$249 

DECISION RESOURCES SIGN MASTER.$179 

BPS BUSINESS GRAPHICS.$259 

Z-SOFT PC PAINTBRUSH w/FRIEZE GRAPHICS. $99 


PROKEY VERSION 3.0 by Rosesoft. $95 

SET-FX for your EPSON $45 

NORTON UTILITIES.$55 

COPY II PC by CENTRAL POINT. $35 

COPYWRITE by Quaid (Copies all IBM software) $45 

COMPUSERVE STARTER KIT.$35 

SIDEWAYS by FUNK SOFTWARE. $49 

CROSSTALK XVI by MICROSOFT $109 

HAYES SMART COM II $95 

TRACE 86 by Morgan (Assembly language debug) CALL 
FLIGHT SIMULATOR. $39 


PROGRESSIVE 

MICRO 

DISTRIBUTORS 

FOR ORDERS ONLY 

1 - 800 - 446-7995 

for further information and technical support 

1 - 404 - 446-7995 

HOURS: 9AM to 9PM EST 
(Sat/Sun-12PM to 5PM EST) 

7000 Peachtree Industrial Boulevard 
Norcross, Georgia 30071 

All prices are sublet to change 

IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines 


NO SURCHARGE FOR MC/VISA 


NETWORKS 

FOR YOUR 

IBM PC 

SHARE FILES 
SHARE DEVICES 
WE CARRY THE BEST 


COMMUNICATE 

WITH YOUR CORPORATE 

MAINFRAME 

• DOWNLOAD DATA 

• TERMINAL EMULATION 

CALL FOR DETAILS 


CHIPS 

64K • 256K • 
8087 • 80287 

MEMORY UPGRADES 
QUANTITY DISCOUNTS 

SOUTH'S LARGEST SUPPLY 


Inquiry 258 


FEBRUARY 1985 • B Y T E 463 






































































DISK DRIVES 



Teac 55B 

★ Slimline, 360K 

★ PC Compatible 

AS LOW AS $119 ea. 


8" Siemens 

★ fddioo-8 

★ Shugart Compatible 

AS LOW AS $111 ea. 




MPI B52 


CCU Apple Drives i 

★ IBM Compatible 


★ Slimline . 

★ 360K Full Height 


★ Fully Apple Compatible 

AS LOW AS $90 ea. 


AS LOW AS $ 1 40 ea. 


Computer 


Components 

Unlimited 


Apple compatible Drives 


OUANTITY 

1 2 10 

Micro Sci 

A-2 orA-20FUIIHT $175 $169 $159 

Controller 65 60 50 

Rana Systems 

Elite I $210 $205 $200 

Elite II, Dbl. Head 335 330 325 

Elite III, Quad Density 395 445 435 

Controller controls 4 Drives 75 70 70 

CCU Half Height 

FD525A Slimline w/cable $150 $145 $140 

CCU Full Height 

FD555Aw/cable $160 $150 $140 

Hard Disk 

10 Meg w/controller Call call call 


ecu 

YOUR LARGEST 
DISK DRIVE 
SUPPLIER 


5Va" Disk Drives 


OUANTITY 

1 2 10 

Teac 

FD55A, 160K $160 $150 $140 

FD55B, 360K 129 125 119 

FD55F, Quad Density 159 150 140 

All Teac s are Half Heights 


8" Disk Drives 


Tandon 

TM100-1,160K 
TM100-2, 360K 
TMi0l-4,Quad Density 
TM55-2,360KV 2 Height 

MPI 

B-52,360K PC Compatible 


$150 $140 $130 
139 137 135 

280 270 260 

195 190 185 


$100 $ 95 $ 90 


Shugart 

SA400,160K $190 $180 $170 

SA455.360KV2 Height 150 140 130 

SA465, Quad Den. V 2 Height 230 220 210 


Mitsubishi 

4851. V 2 Height $159 $149 $139 


4853, Quad Den. v 2 Height 


169 159 140 


Control Data Corp. 

CDC9409.360K $190 $180 $170 


OUANTITY 

1 2 10 


Siemens 


FDD-100-8 

FDD-200-8 


801R, Sgl./Dbl. 
851R, Dbl./Dbl. 


$129 $120 $111 
180 170 160 


Shugart 


$160 $150 $140 
480 470 460 


Tandon 

TM848-1E, Sgl./Dbl. Va Ht. 
TM848-2E, Dbl. / Dbl. V 2 Ht. 

Mitsubishi 

M2894-63, Dbl./Dbl. 

M2896-63, Dbl./Dbl. ViHt. 


$240 $230 $220 
370 360 350 


$400 $390 $380 
400 390 380 


5Va" & 8" 

Power Supply & cabinets 


OUANTITY 

1 2 10 

JMR 5W 

SingleCabinetw/pwr $ 70 $ 60 $ 50 

Dual Thinline Cab w/pwr 80 70 60 

Dual Cabinets Power 80 70 60 

All have 6 month warranty 

JMR 8" 

Sgl. Cabinet w/ pwr & fan $220 $210 $200 

Dual w/pwr for 2 thinlines 230 220 210 

Dual w/ pwr & fan 270 260 250 


Computer 


Customer service & Technical 

(213) 618-0487 

Components 


Sales Desk 

(800) 847-1718 

1 1 ■ VY\ 

No Surcharge for Credit Cards 

Outside California 

unumiTea 

All Prices Reflect a Cash, 
Pre-Paid Discount 

(213) 618-0477 

A California Corporation 

This Ad Supersedes All Others 

inside California 
































Brother 


Okidata 93P 

★ HR-15XL 


★ 15" Carriage 1 

★ 17 CPS 


★ I60cpsw/correspondence 

$399 


$589 



C. Itoh F-10 


Epson 

★ 40 CPS 
★ Letter Quality 


★ FX 80 + 

★ 160 CPS 

★ New version 

$929 


Call for Lowest Quote 


CALL (800) 847-1718 


PRINTERS 


Epson 

RX-80(l20cps) Save 

RX-80FT At Least 

RX-100+ $150 

FX-80 + 

FX-100 + 

LQ1500 

JX-80 $ 589 

we are an Authorized Dealer 

Okidata 

OKI82A, 120CPS $ 295 

OKI85A 549 

OKI84P 669 

OKI 84S . 749 

OKI92P. 559 

OKI93P 589 


Call for other Models 
free Plug n Play Roms w/92 & 95 


JUKI 

6100,18 cpsLtr. Quality $ 394 

6300, 40 cps 'New'' w/3K Buffer 
Letter Quality 775 

Brother Dist. by Dynax 

HR15, 12CPS $ 375 

HR25,25 CpS . 659 

HR35,36 CpS . 949 

Panasonic 

1091,120 cps w/tractor.$ 289 

Star Micronics 

Gemini 10X $ 259 

Gemini 15X 389 

Delta 10 379 

Power type. 390 

C. ITOH 

8510AP. $319 

F10,40 CPS 929 

PrintmasterFl055pu . 1179 


Toshiba 

PI 351,192 cps.$1289 


PRINTER INTERFACES 


Fourth Dimension 

Card & cable .$ 49 

Microtek 

Dumpling GX(GrapplerCompatible) $ 89 

Dumpling GX exp to64K. 149 

DumplingGX16Kw/16Kexpto64K 169 

for each additional 16K . 15 

Okidata Options 

Tractor for 82 & 92.$ 59 

Serial interface 99 

Orange Micro 

Grappler + . . $ 109 

Grappler + W/16K. 179 

Star or Epson 

Epson Serial interface.$ 119 

Star Serial interface . 59 


WE STOCK WHAT WE SELL!! 


RETAIL STORES: 

11976 Aviation Blvd. 
Inglewood, CA 90304 

16129 Hawthorne Blvd., Suite E 
Lawndale, CA 90260 


MAIL ORDER: Inquiry 51 

P.O. BOX 1936 
Hawthorne, CA 90250 


Retail Hours: 

10 a.m. - 6 p.m. Mon.-Fri. 
10 a.m. - 3 p.m. Sat. 


All merchandise new. we accept MC, visa. Wire 
Transfer, COD Call, Certified Check, P.O. s from 
qualified firms, APO accepted. Shipping: Minimum 
$4.50 first 5 pounds. Tax: California Res. Only add 
6 v 2 % sales tax. All returns subject to 15% restock¬ 
ing charge. Advertised prices for Mail Order only. 
Retail prices slightly higher. 

Prices Subject to Change. 


Customer service Hours: 

10 a.m. - 4 p.m. Mon.-Fri. 
John Aurentz 
(213)618-0487 
Mail Order Hours: 

7 a.m. - 7 p.m. Mon.-Fri. 

10 a.m. - 3 p.m. sat. 

(800)847-1718 (213)618-0477 

(OutsideCalifornia) (insideCalifornia) 
































































SYSTEMS 


IBM PC System 

★ PC 256K 

★ Controller Keyboard 
★ Two 360K Drives 
★ IBM Monochrome 
Card and Monitor 

$2059 


HE CPU 

Apple 

$ 690 

Macintosh 


1895 

lie Portable 


899 

Kayrpoll 

Kaypro 

Call 

Kaypro4 


Call 

KayprolO 


Call 

Kayprolix 


Call 



APPLE HE 
System 

★ CPU,Keyboard 

★ Two Slimline Drives & 

Controller Card 

★ Hi-Res Green Monitor 

$1299 


IBM 

PC 256K, NO Drives $1250 

PC256K.1 Drive 1399 

PC256K,2Drives 1599 

XT W/10 Meg, 256K 3495 

Additional Memory 64K 27 

AT Standard Config. Call 

at w/20 meg. Call 

Tava 

PCCompatiblew/Monitor $1395 


IBM PC System 

★ PC 256K 

★ Controller Keyboard 
★ Two 360K Drives 

★ Color Graphics Card 

★ Hi-Res Green Monitor 

$1799 


Sanyo 

MBC 550-2 $799 

MBC 555-2 1089 

Optional Serial Port 69 

Optional 360K Drive 159 

Compaq 

Portable (PC Compatible) 2, 360K Drives 
256K of Memory $2150 


Call for all new Compaq's 


princton 
Graphics 

★ HX-12 (640x280) 
★ Hi-Res RGB 

$459 




® 1 

<s> j 

1 

_J 


MONITORS 


IBM Monitor 

★ Monochrome 
(720 X 350) 

★ Hi-Res Green 

$219 


Amdek 

★ Model 300 
★ Color Composite 
(300 X 260) 


$279 


Amdek 

300C, Hi-Res Green 
300A, Hi-Res Amber 
310A, Monochrome Amber 
300Hi-ResColorComp. 

500 RGB Composite 
dvm Board for Apple RGB 



IBM 


$ 139 

Monochrome Green 

$ 219 

149 

Color Hi-Res 


559 

169 


zenith 


279 

ZVM122 


$ 99 

399 

ZVM123 


99 

129 

12AUW 

BMC 

$ 79 


9191 


219 



Taxan 

425 Color RGB $399 

440 Ultra Hi-Res. 999 

Princton Graphics 

MAX12, Monochrome Amber $ 179 
HX12, RGB Color 459 

SR-l2w/DoublerBoard 899 



Anchor 

Automation 

★ 300 Baud 
★ internal PC 
Compatible 

$79 


Hayes 

Micro Modem he $ 239 

300 Baud 205 

1200B internal 399 

1200 459 

2400 Baud Call 

466 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


U.S. Robotics 

★ 300, 1200 Baud 

★ standalone 

★ With Cable 

$239 


Prometheus 


Promodem $ 329 

Pro 1200A Apple intw/sw 329 

Prol200BIBM intw/sw 299 

ProMacw/cable&sw 329 

No.ccable 12 

Alpha Disp. 89 

Options Proc. 89 


Prometheus 

★ Pro Modem 1200 

$329 


Anchor Automation 


Mark3ForTl $ 59 

Mark VI300 Baud IBM 79 

Mark Xll, 1200 Baud. 229 

U.S. Robotics 

Password.$ 239 


Inquiry 52 





















































































IBM & APPLE ACCY’S 



IBM PC 
Controller 

★ ControlesTwo* 5V«" 
Full or V 2 HT Drives 

Generic $79 

IBM $129 


64K upgrades 

★ Nine Prime 4164 


Quadlink 

★ 1 Year Warranty 


★ By Quadram 
★ Run Apple software 
on Your PC 

$26 set 


iooo pcs $2.60 ea 


$389 


IBM EXTRAS 


Ast Research 

Six Pack + $ 249 

Mega + . 265 

Add on Ports 49 

Hercules 

Color Card.$ 185 

Graphics Card 329 

Hard Disk 

1 0 Meg. External w / pur.$1195 

IBM 

Monochrome Adapter $ 229 

Color Card 239 

Paradise Systems 

Multi-display Card.$ 329 

NewModularCard 345 

ModuleA 88 

Module B 240 

Quadram 

QuadColorCard .$ 199 

Quadlink. 389 

64K upgrade 

64K of Memory $26 

AT upgrade 

upgrade 200 ns. $169 

PC Products 

PC Peacock $ 215 

Ports 

Parallel $ 79 

Serial. 79 

ecu 

Color Graphics Card . $159 


APPLE EXTRAS 


ALS 

z Engine $119 

CPM 3.0 Card ..... 249 

Astar 

rf Modulator.$ 15 

Fanw/Surge 34 

ecu 

16K Mem. Card 1 yr war.$ 49 

Kraft 

Joystick.$ 44 

Macro 

Joystick.$ 29 

Micro Max 

Viewmax 80,80 col. card.$ 139 

Viewmax 80E (F for HE) 64K 129 

Micro Soft 

Mouse.$ 139 

Premium Soft Card HE 369 

Multiplan. 189 

Soft Card (Z80)W/64K 279 

Micro Tek 

Serial interface $ 89 

TC 

Joystick.$ 39 

Select-A-Port. 31 

Paddles 34 


514" DISKETTES 

ecu 

Sgl/Dbl reinforced hub $16 I00forl40 
Dbl/Dbl reinforced hub 19 I00forl70 
Not Bulk Packed 


Sgl/Dbl $33 100 for 300 

Dbl/Dbl 39 100for370 

Fuji 

Sgl/Dbl $19 100 for 180 

Dbl/Dbl 25 100 for 230 

verbatim 

Sgl/Dbl.$26 100 for 240 

Dbl/Dbl 36 100 for 340 


Dbl/Dbl 


Dbl/Dbl 


8" DISKETTES 
Dysan 

$34 

53 

Verbatim 

$30 

40 


100 for 320 
100 for480 


100 for280 
100for 360 


DISK ACCESSORIES 
verbatim 

8" or5V4 M Head Cleaning Kit.$ 9 

Flip Tub 

5V4" Holds70 disks, plexiglass $ 17 


Computer 
Components 
Unlimited 


CALL TOLL FREE 

( 800 ) 847-1718 


Inquiry 52 


RETAIL STORES: 

11976 Aviation Blvd 
ingipwood f A 90504 


16179 Hawthorne Blvd Suite E 
Lawndale CA 90260 


MAIL ORDER 

PO Box 1956 
Hawthorne CA 902S0 


AH 'Merchandise new we accept MC, \/is;j Wire 
i.ransfei COC Call, : embed Check PO $ from 
qualified emis A PO at i epred shipping Minimum 
S4 first S pound* fax California Res Only add 
b sales rax All ipturm subject tr is restock 
mg charge Advemsen pnepe fo» Mai' Oide r miy 
Re- hi ono slightly highfc' 

Puces Subject to l nuntK- 


A California Corporation 

Customer Service & Technical 

(213)618-0487 

Sales Desk 

(800) 847-1718 

Outside California 

(213)618-0477 

inside California 


no Surcharge for credit Cards 
All Prices Reflect a Cash, 
Pre-Paid Discount 

This Ad Supersedes All Others 


Customer service Hours: 

10 a.m. - a p.m. Mon.-Fri. 
John Aurentz 
(213) 618-0487 

Mail Order Hours: 

7 a.m. - 7 p.m. Mon.-Fri. 

10 a.m. - 3 p.m. Sat. 

(800)847-1718 (213)618-0477 

(OutsideCalifornia) (insideCalifornia) 

Retail Hours: 

10 a.m. - 6 p.m. Mon.-Fri. 

10 a.m. - 3 p.m. Sat. 


























































What business 
does a handsome 
dog like me have 
with a top cat 
like you? 


My name’s McGruff, and it’s my busi¬ 
ness to help prevent crime. I think it 
should be your business, too—to teach 
your employees how to protect them¬ 
selves. Just send for my business kit 
— itll help you develop a program 
that teaches your employees how 
to make their homes burglar- 

make their neighborhoods 
, even how not to get mugged. 
And, while you’re at it, get in 
touch with the cops—they can help 
you out. So now you’re probably won- 
(like a top cat businessman 
should ), what’s in it for you. That’s easy. 
When your company works harder for 
your people, your people work harder for 
your company. 

So take the time, and... 


TAKE A BITE OUT OF 


■ McGruff, Crime Prevention Coalition, 
j 20 Banta Race, Hackensack, NJ 07601 
1 Rease send me lots of information on 
| Crime Prevention. 

1 Name:_ 

I Company:_— 

I Address:__ 

| City:_State:_Zip: 


A message from the Crime Prevention Coalition, 
this publication and The Ad Council. 

© 1980 The Advertising Council, Inc. 























No One Will Beat these 
Prices and Delivery 

t AlPB A ^11# t Afl ■ A W t Af Bi ■ • 


WE STOCK WHAT WE SELL 


BMC 9191 
MONITOR 

★ Color Composite 
★ Amdek Color I Compatible 
★ Works w/Apple, Commodore, IBM 
and many others 
List $349 
Close Out Price 


$169 


IBM PC 


★ With 256K Memory 
★ No Drives or Controller 
★ Build Yourself & Save, Save, Save 

List $1595 


¥ 'Y 


$1250 




BMC 12AUW 
MONITOR 

★ Hi-Res Green 
★ 12” Composite Video 

List $99 

Close Out Price {l 


$69 




Call for Comparable Discounts on ALL IBM Products! 






Call (800) 841-0905 


For Lowest 
Quote 


64K UPGRADES 

★ 9 - 4164, 150 or 200 ns 
★ One Year Warranty 


List 99 
100 sets 


$24 set 
$22 set 


OKIDATA 92 

★ ML92 
★ Free Roms 
★ 160 cps 

List $599 $359 

OKI 93P $539 


AST SIXPACK + 
w/384K Installed 

★ Par. & Ser. Ports 

★ Clock / Calendar 
★ Optional Game Port 


List $799 


$459 


HAYES 1200 

★ 1200 Baud Standalone 
★ State-of-the-art 


List $698 


$459 


ORDER DESK: 
(213)320-6822 
(800) 841-0905 
(OUTSIDE CALIFORNIA) 


III 

■II 

0 , 

1 

U 

■■ 

^Mllll* c o 

M P U T E R S 

; • We Accept MC, Visa, Wire 

• Shipping Minimum $5.00 

Transfers, Certified Checks 

• Purchase Orders Accepted 

• COD’S Available 

• This Ad Supersedes all Others 

• No Surcharge for 

Inquiry 250 

Credit Cards 

Prices Subject to Change 


MAIL ORDER & WAREHOUSE: 

20317 Western Avenue 
Torrance, CA 90501 


VISA 
































AMERICA’S NO. 1 

=% J Systems 
===“== Specialists 


WE CUSTOMIZE IBM PC SYSTEMS 


IBM PC $1499 

256K, two disk drives 360K each. 

Drive Controller and Keyboard 


— 



m j) 

e 


1 ZBM 



- - 







IBMPCw/lOMB 

$2199 


256K, one floppy Drive, Keyboard 
10 MB Hard Disk with Controller 

BOOTS FROM HARD DISK 


ALL SYSTEMS ARE CONFIGURED 
AND TESTED AT NO EXTRA CHARGE 


I BMPCw/30MB 

$3299 


256K, one floppy Drive, Keyboard 
30 MB Hard Disk with Controller 
and Booster Power Supply 

BOOTS FROM HARD DISK 


★ PRICE WAR * cauusLAST 


PRINTERS 

HARD DRIVES 

RX 80 $229 FX 80 $389 

EPSON RX 80FT $279 FX 100 $569 

LQ-1500 Parallel $1,099 Serial $1199 

LQ-1500 Tractor.$50 Cutsheet feeder $399 

TALL GRASS TECHNOLOGY 

20 MB w/20 MB Backup $2,399 

35 MB w/45 MB Backup $3,799 

70 MB w/60 MB Backup $5,999 

Controller Card $ 140 Cartridge $40 

OKIDATA g jjg 

INCLUDES PLUG & PLAY 84P $649 

QUBIE 10MB.CALL 

JUKI Ltr Quality, 18 CPS, 13 wide $379 

6100 Tractor $129 

EVEREX 10MB $699 

TOSHIBA 1351 $1299 

Tractor .$169 Cut Sheet feeder $799 

MAYNARD 10MB/30MB 

10MB/WS-1 $888 I0MB/WS-2 $1,029 

30MB/WS1A $1999 30MB/WS-2A $2,099 

WS-l Gemini $1049 WS 2 Gemini $1149 

The Gemini’' includes 10MB Hard Disk & Half Ht. Floppy 

DYNAXDX-15 $369 

Keyboard $149 Tractor $99 Sheet Feeder $199 

BROTHER HR-25 $599 HR-35 $849 

Tractor $119 Cut Sheet feeder $199 

FLOPPY DRIVES 


QUME SPRINT mo $1299 

With IBM Interface Module 1155 $1499 

- HALF 

TE AC HEIGHT 558 DSDD $109 

NEC SPINWRITER 

2050 $699 

3550 $1299 

8850 $1699 

NEC PINWRITER 

P2 CALL 

P3 CALL 

CDC Full Ht. DSDD $139 

TANDON 100-2 cn0 

Full Ht. DSDD P 1 07 

★ SUPER SPECIALS ★ 

64K RAM Set Of 9 chips $25 

MONITORS 

MAX-12 Amber-Monochrome $ 179 

_ HX 12-Hi Res Color $429 

PGS SR-12-Super Hi-Res Color $599 

Scan Doubler CALL 

HAYES 1200 Standalone $439 

SMARTMODEM 12008 w/Software $369 

TAX AN 440 Color Super Hi Res $549 

122A(M) $169 I21G(M) $159 116A(C) $149 

8087 CHIP $109 

JUKI 6100 $399 

300A (Composite) $159 300G $139 

AMDEK3IOA(Mono) $179 

MAYNARD 10MB/WS-2 . $1,029 

IBM PC Keyboard (original) .. CALL 

MODEMS 

AlflHATA 92P 5349 

OKIDATA 93P $549 

INCLUDES PLUG & PLAY 84P $649 

MICROCOM ERA 2 (uo 

PC Internal 1200 Baud w/software, 4 Yr. Warranty v J J / 

___ HR-25 (23CPS) $599 

BROTHER HR-35 (36CPS) $849 

HAYES 1200 Stondolone $439 

SMARTMODEM 12008 w/software $369 

QUBIE Standalone $329 Internal $299 

KEYTRONIC 

Deluxe Keyboard KB5 151 5179 

POPCOM Internal or Standalone CALL 

ORCHID TECHNOLOGY 

Blossom 64 K (to 384K) $249 

Turbo 186 . CALL 

PROMETHEUS promodem 1200 $299 

Minimum order $100 Prices & availability subfect to change We ship UPS 
Shipptng/hondling charges vary COO requires cash money order cashier or certified 
check only For advance payment please call first for workorder number Personal & 
Company check take 3 weeks to dear 20% restocking fee on returns No PO's or 
foreign orders 

f TSfT AMERICAN 

W hBMHI EXPRESS 

NO SURCHARGE ON COD, VISA or MC AMEX 5% 


WITH YOUR BEST QUOTES 


NETWORKING 


ORCHID TECHNOLOGY 

PC Net PLUS Starter Kit.$799 

PC netBlossom, PC turbo, PC netPlusRam.CALL 


IRMALINE 

CALL FOR YOUR BEST PRICES 


MULTI-DISPLAY CARDS 


Mono OR Color.$199 

PERSYST BOB Color.CALL 


- MonoGraph Plus w/dock & PP.$369 

AST Serial Port Option .$30 


EVEREX Graphics Edge 


CALL 


MYLEX 


CALL 


TECMAR Graphics Master 


$429 


■■ pA Mono Graphic $319 

HERCULES Color Graphic $169 


NEW STBwufll 


$299 


VUTEK Color with Parallel & Serial CALL 


PARADISE 

NEW Modular Card 


$299 


MULTI FUNCTION CARDS 


ORCHID TECHNOLOGY 

Blossom 64K (to 384K) $249 

PC net/upgroaes.CALL 


NEW QUADBOARD (to 384K) $219 


AST SIX PAK with 64K (to 384K) $249 


AST MEGA PLUS with 64K (to 512K) 


MISC. ADD ONS 


8087 CHIP 


$249 

$109 


CABLE Parallel 

Keyboard Extension, 6 ft. 

$20 Serial ... 

$25 

$10 

PLATINUM DISKETTES 

Box of 10 

$29 

VERBATIM Datalife DSDD 


Box of 10. 


$27 

COMPUTER 

POWER P2 $109 

ACCESSORIES DIRECTOR PI2 $149 

STANDBY 

200 WATTS.. 

.$279 

POWER SUPPLY 300 watts 

$379 

Surge Protection, up to 30 minutes Standby Power 


WILL CALL: 


Please call first 
for workorder number. 


COM PUMA it 805 - 

4 

98-6635 

3541 OLD CONEJO ROAD, SUITE 102, THOUSAND OAKS, CA 91320 TELEX 888522 Ad #193 


470 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 57 








































































































































































PRINTER RIBBONS 


PRICE PER PER 

RIBBON DOZEK 

ANADEX 9500 . 10.50 109.8C 

APPLE DMP . 5.25 52.20 

C. ITOH PROWRITER 5.25 52.20 

EPSON MX-FX 70/80 5.00 48.00 

EPSON MX-FX 100 . 6.75 69.00 

GEMINI 10-10X-15-15X 2.50 23.40 

IBM HARMONICA Vi" 6.75 78.00 

IBM HARMONICA %” 7.95 92.40 

IBM 4-COLOR . 15.75 180.00 

IDS MICROPRISM-480 5.75 58.80 

IDS PAPER TIGER 460/560 6.75 78.00 

IDS PRISM . 7.95 92.40 

IDS 4-COLOR . 15.75 180.00 

NEC- 3500 M/S Non Flip 6.25 69.00 

NEC- 3500 NYLON . 9.00 96.00 

NEC PC-8023A 5.25 52.20 

OKI DATA 80/82/83/92 . 2.50 23.40 

OKIDATA - 84 5.00 57.00 

RADIO SHACK DMP-2100 7.50 87.00 

RADIO SHACK LP VI & VIII 5.75 58.80 

SILVER REED EX 550 S/S 5.00 57.00 

SILVER REED EX 550 NYLON 9.00 105.00 

TOSHIBA- 1350 7.50 87.00 

XEROX 610/620 M/S . 5.95 66.00 


Add $3.00 Ship. & Hand. — To Order Call 
Toll Free 1-800-742-1122 
In Ml (313) 569-3218 or Write for our Catalog 

DWIGHT COMPANY, INC. 

15565 Northland Drive - West Tower 
Southfield, Michigan 48075-64% 


Inquiry 359 



Your IBM Model 50, 60, 65, 75, 85 or 
95 Electronic Typewriter can be a 
computer printer or terminal using 
our interface modules: 

Model 5060 RS232 Serial 
Model 5060-CP Centronics Parallel 



Both Versions 
can be easily 
installed and 
require NO 
modifica¬ 
tions to the 
typewriter. 

A 2K buffer is 
standard, 8K optional. 


CALIFORNIA MICRO 
COMPUTER 


9323 Warbler Ave., Fountain Valley. CA 92708 

(714) 964-9301 



Monitor Mover 
Gives Back the Desk 



• Models to fit most CRTs 

• Rotates 360° on base 

• Adjustable height 

• Support tray swivels and tilts 

• Holds up to 50 lbs 

• Clamp, screw and wall mountings 


Lirffekllllllll 

P.O. Box 8056 
Grand Rapids, Ml 49508 
(616) 241-4040 


Inquiry 183 


BLUE BOOK 


Prices shown for thousands 
of computers, software, and 
peripherals. 

Each listing includes sug¬ 
gested list, avg. retail, whole¬ 
sale, and used prices for all the 
geographical regions of the 
United States. 

Send $12.95 + $.50 postage to: 

NCDA 

National Computer Dealers Association 

5420 Hwy. 6 North 
Houston, Texas 77084 


Inquiry 55 


UNLIMITED 


PERIPHERALS 


Disk TYays 


Amaray Media Mate 5 

SIX 

Ring King Data Defender w/Lock 

16 

Joysticks 


Hayes Mach II 

33 

Hayes Mach ill 

41 

Hayes Paddles 

30 

Wico Boss 

11 

Wico Original Bat Handle 

17 

Ribbons 


Prowriter/lmagewriter 

5 

Okidata 82/Gemim I0x/I5* 

2 

MX/FX 80 

S 

10" Colors Available 1 Add 30% 


RAM 64K 


150 nano sec—set of 9 

35 

Accessories 


Hayes Smart modem 1200 

440 

Astar RF Modulator |Apple/lBM) 

25 

Astar Fan w/surge protection 

29 

Brooks Surge Stopper VCN 4-6 

S25 

SOFTWARE TOOII 


25201 La Paz. Laguna Hills. CA 

92653 

MASTERCARD/VISA ACCEPTED 

(CALIF) 1 800 982 5800 


(OUTSIDE CALIF) 1 800 633 4787 


Inquiry 319 



f 


You Love Your 
Keep It Fun 

Let our fast stand alone 


Work] 

ie I 


Cobol Cross Reference 


take the drudgery out of programming! 

Your IBM PC W/128K. DOS 2.0. one disk drive and 
our Program. 

Will cross reference and/or print Source 
Code 

Will flag duplicate data names and invalid 
references 

Will allow more than 1400 data names and 
11.000 references 

Will process all versions of Cobol 
Will be "personalized" with your name on 
_ the report heading. _ 


Invest $25 00 in your future 

Send check or money order to: 

Meta System Inc. of Alaska 
2806 Iris Drive 
Anchorage, Alaska 99503 
Phone 907-243-8619 


Inquiry 205 


plSK 


BOO? 


hard ^ uR itY 


data 


SEC' 


FiXT ends 
boot hassles , 
stops data 
thieves — 

DAT AM AC, DAVONG, 
GREAT LAKES, IOMEGA, 
XEBEC, ZOBEX, others. 

No-Slot Installation for 
IBM PC, COMPAQ, COLUMBIA 
$70 - $95 + tax/shpg 

GOLDEN BOW 
SYSTEMS 
Box 3039 
San Diego 
CA 92103 
619/298-9349 




NEW! 


_Safe§lohL 

KEYBOARD PROTECTOR 

Remains in place during keyboard use. 
Prevents damage from liquid spills, dust, 
ashes, etc. Fits like a second skin, excellent 
feel. Homerou/ and numeric locators. 
Available for: IBM-PC, Apple He, Radio 
Shack Model 100, Commodore 64. 

Send S29.95, check or M.O., Visa & MC 
include exp. date. Specify computer type. 
Dealer inquires invited. Free brochure 
available. 

MERRITT Computer Products, Inc. 
2925 LBJ, # 180 / Dallas, Texas 75234 
(214)942-1142 


Inquiry 124 


Inquiry 203 


























































4164 MK 2oon' MIC 9/39.95 


41256 ” c 29.95 


STATIC RAMS 


EPROMS 


2101 

256x4 

(450ns) 

1.95 

5101 

256x4 

(450ns)(cmos) 

3.95 

2102-1 

1024x4 

(450ns) 

.89 

2102L-4 

1024x1 

(450ns)(LP) 

99 

2102L-2 

1024x1 

(250ns)(LP) 

1.45 

2125 

1024x1 

(45ns) 

2.95 

2111 

256x4 

(450ns) 

2.49 

21T1L 

256x4 

(450ns)(LP) 

2.95 

2112 

256x4 

(450ns) 

2.99 

2114 

1024x4 

(450ns) 

8 9.95 

2114-25 

1024x4 

(250ns) 

8/10.95 

2114L-4 

1024x4 

(450ns)(LP) 

8 12.95 

2114L-3 

1024x4 

(300ns)(LP) 

8 13.45 

2114L-2 

1024x4 

(200ns)(LP) 

8 13.95 

2114L 15 

1024x4 

(150ns)(LP) 

8 19.95 

TC5514 

1024x4 

(650ns)(cmos) 

4.95 

2141 

4096x1 

(200ns) 

2.95 

2147 

4096x1 

(55ns) 

4.95 

2148 

1024x4 

(70ns) 

4.95 

TMS4044 4 

4096x1 

(450ns) 

3.49 

TMS4044 3 

4096x1 

(300ns) 

3.99 

TMS4044-2 

4096x1 

(200ns) 

4.49 

TMS40L44 2 

4096x1 

(200ns)(LP) 

4.95 

UPD410 

4096x1 

(100ns) 

3.95 

MK4118 

1024x8 

(250ns) 

9.95 

TMM2016 200 

2048x8 

(200ns) 

4.15 

TMM2016 150 

2048x8 

(150ns) 

4.95 

TMM2016-100 

2048x8 

(100ns) 

6.15 

HM6116-4 

2048x8 

(200ns)(cmos) 

4.75 

HM6116-3 

2048x8 

(150ns)(cmos) 

4.95 

HM6116-2 

2048x8 

(120ns)(cmos) 

6.95 

HM6116LP 4 

2048x8 

(200ns) (cmos)(LP) 

4.95 

HM6116LP 3 

2048x8 

(150ns)(cmos)(LP) 

5.95 

HM6116LP 2 

2048x8 

(120ns)(cmos)(LP) 

8.95 

TC5516 

2048x8 

(250ns)(cmos) 

9.95 

TMS4016 

2048x8 

(200ns) 

6.95 

Z 6132 

4096x8 

(300ns)(Qstat) 

34.95 

HM6264P 15 

8192x8 

(150ns)(cmos) 

24.95 

HM6264LP 15 

8192x8 

(150ns)(cmos)(LP) 

27.95 

HM6264LP 12 

8192x8 

(120ns)(cmos)(LP) 

29.95 


1702 

256x8 

dus) 

2708 

1024x8 

(450ns) 

2758 

1024x8 

(450ns)(5V) 

2716 6 

2048x8 

(650ns) 

2716 

2048x8 

(450ns)(5V) 

2716 1 

2048x8 

(350ns)(5V) 

TMS2516 

2048x8 

(450ns)(5V) 

TMS2716 

2048x8 

(450ns) 

TMS2532 

4096x8 

(450ns)(5V) 

2732 

4096x8 

(450ns)(5V) 

2732A-4 

4096x8 

(450ns)(5V)(21 V PGM) 

2732A 35 

4096x8 

(350ns)(5V)(21 V PGM) 

2732A 

4096x8 

(250ns)(5V)(21 V PGM) 

2732A-2 

4096x8 

(200ns)(5V)(21 V PGM) 

2764 

8192x8 

(450ns)(5V) 

2764 250 

8192x8 

(250ns)(5V) 

2764 200 

8192x8 

(200ns)(5V) 

TMS2564 

8192x8 

(450ns)(5V) 

MCM68764 

8192x8 

(450ns)(5V)(24 pin) 

MCM68766 

8192x8 

(350ns)(5V)(24 pin) 

27128-45 

16384x8 

(450ns)(5V) 

27128 30 

16384x8 

(300ns)(5V) 

27128 

16384x8 

(250ns)(5V) 

5V= Single 

5 Volt Supply 

21V PGM= Program at 21 ' 


LP=Low power Qstat= Quasi-Static 

DYNAMIC RAMS 


TMS4027 

4096x1 

(250ns) 

1.99 

2107 

4096x1 

(200ns) 

1.95 

MM5280 

4096x1 

(300ns) 

1.95 

TMS4050 

4096x1 

(300ns) 

1.95 

UPD411 

4096x1 

(300ns) 

1.95 

TMS4060 

4096x1 

(300ns) 

1.95 

MK4108 

8192x1 

(200ns) 

.49 

MM5298 

8192x1 

(250ns) 

.49 

4116 300 

16384x1 

(300ns) 

8 6.95 

4116 250 

16384x1 

(250ns) 

8 6.95 

4116 200 

16384x1 

(200ns) 

8 8.95 

4116 150 

16384x1 

(150ns) 

8 10.95 

4116120 

16384x1 

(120ns) 

8 12.95 

2118 

16384x1 

(150ns)(5v) 

4.95 

MK4332 

32768x1 

(200ns) 

9.95 

4164 200 

65536x1 

(200ns)(5v) 

9/39.95 

4164 150 

65536x1 

(150ns)(5v) 

9 44.95 

4164 120 

65536x1 

(120ns)(5v) 

8.95 

MCM6665 

65536x1 

(200ns)(5v) 

6.95 

TMS4164-20 

65536x1 

(200ns)(5V) 

6.95 

TMS4164-15 

65536x1 

(150ns)(5v) 

7.95 

4164 REFRESH 

65536x1 

(150ns)(5V)(REFRESH) 8.95 

TMS4416-20 

16384x4 

(200ns)(5V) 

8.95 

TMS4416-15 

16384x4 

(150ns)(5v) 

9.95 

41256-200 

262144x1 

(200ns)(5v) 

29.95 

41256 150 

262144x1 

(150ns)(5v) 

31.95 

5v= Single 5 Volt Supply 

REFRESH 

= Pin 1 Refresh 


4.50 

3.95 

5.95 

2.95 

3.95 

4.95 
4 95 

7.95 

4.95 
4.95 
4.95 

4.95 

6.95 

10.95 

5.95 

6.95 

11.95 

10.95 
24 95 

42.95 

16.95 

18.95 

19.95 
Volts 


★ ★★★HIGH TECH^^* 
NEC ywPD7220 $39.95 

GRAPHICS DISPLAY CONTROLLER 

★ FOUR MEGABIT BIT-MAPPED DISPLAY MEMORY 

★ DRAWS LINES, ARCS, CIRCLES & RECTANGLES AT 
1.2 MILLION PIXELS PER SECOND 

★ ZOOM, PAN, WINDOWING. AND LIGHT PEN 
CAPABILITIES 

★ DMA TRANSFER WITH 8257 OR 8237 

★ UP TO 1024 x 1024 PIXEL GRAPHICS OR 256 x 100 
CHARACTERS 

★ ★★ ★SPOTLIGHTS ★★★. 


ORDER TOLL FREE 


m-w*iiMi 

Tm 


800-662-6279 

(CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS) 


CRYSTALS 

32 768 KHz 195 

1.0 MHz 3.95 

1 8432 3.95 

2.0 2.95 

2.097152 295 

2.4576 
3.2768 
3.579545 
4.0 
4.032 
5.0 

5.0688 
5.185 
5.7143 
6.0 
6.144 
6.5536 
8.0 
100 

10 738635 
14.31818 
15.0 
16.0 
17 430 
18.0 
18.432 
20.0 
22.1184 
24 0 
32.0 


f GENERATORS 
BIT RATE 


MCI 4411 

BR1941 

4702 

COM5016 

COM8116 

MM5307 


11.95 

11.95 

12.95 

16.95 

10.95 
10 95 


FUNCTION 


MC4024 

LM566 

XR2206 

8038 


CRT 


CONTROLLERS 

6845 

12.95 

68B45 

19 95 

6847 

11.95 

68047 

24.95 

HD46505SP 

15.95 

MCI 372 

6.95 

8275 

29 95 

7220 

39.95 

CRT5027 

19 95 

CRT5037 

34 95 

TMS9918A 

39 95 

DP8350 

49 95 


Z-80 

2.5 MHz 


Z80 CPU 
Z80-CTC 
Z80DART 
Z80 DMA 
Z80-PIO 
Z80-SIO 0 
Z80-SI0 1 
Z80-SIO 2 
Z80-SIO 9 


4.0 MHz 


Z80A CPU 
Z80A-CTC 
Z80A DART 
Z80A DMA 
Z80A-PIO 
Z80A-SIO 0 
Z80ASIO 1 
Z80A-SIO 2 
Z80A SIO 9 


2 95 
3.95 

8 95 

9 95 

3 95 
10 95 
10 95 
10 95 
10 95 


6500 

1.0 MHz 

I 6502 4.95 

65C02(CMOS) 12.95 

6504 6.95 

6505 8.95 

6507 9.95 

6520 2.95 

6522 5.49 

6532 9.95 

6545 9.95 

6551 9.95 

2.0 MHz 

5.95 

5.95 

9.95 

11.95 

12.95 

11.95 


6502A 
6520A 
6522A 
6532A 
6545A 
6551A 


6.0 MHz 


3.0 MHz 

L 6502B 8.95 j 


| Z80B CPU 
Z80B-CTC 
Z80B-PIO 
Z80B DART 
Z80BSIO 0 
Z80BSIO 2 


8 95 

9 95 
9 95 

19 95 
29 95 
29 95 


ZILOG 


Z6132 
LZ8671 


34.95 
39 95 , 


UARTS 

I AY5 1013 
AY3-1015 
PT1472 
I TR1602 
| 2350 
2651 
IM6402 
IM6403 
UPD7201 
l INS8520 


3.95 

6.95 

9.95 

3.95 

9.95 

8.95 

7.95 

8.95 

19.95 

10.95 , 


6800 

I 68000 8 39 95 

6800 2.95 

6802 7.95 

6803 19 95 

6808 13.90 

6809E 895 

6809 8 95 

6810 2.95 

6820 4.35 

6821 2.95 

6828 14.95 

6840 12.95 

6843 34 95 

6844 25.95 

6845 12.95 

| 6847 11.95 

6850 3.25 

6852 5.75 

6860 7 95 

6875 6.95 

6880 2.25 

6883 22 95 

68047 24.95 

68488 19 95 

6800= 1 MHz 

68 BOO 10.95 

68B02 1195 

| 68B09E 11 95 

68B09 11 95 

68B10 5.95 

68B21 595 

68B40 19.95 

68B45 19.95 

68B50 5.95 

68B00=2 MHz 



8200 


DISK 
I CONTROLLERS 


8202 

8203 

8205 

8212 

8214 

8216 

8224 

8226 

8228 

8237 

8237 5 

8238 
8243 

8250 

8251 
8251A 
8253 
8253 5 
8255 
8255 5 
8257 
8257-5 
8259 
8259 5 

8271 

8272 

8274 

8275 
8279 
8279 5 
8282 

8283 

8284 
8286 

8287 

8288 
8289 
8292 


24.95 
39 95 

3.50 

1.80 

3.85 

1.75 

2.25 
1.80 

3.49 

13.95 

15.95 

4.49 
4.45 

10.95 

3.95 
4.49 

6.95 

7.95 

4.49 

5.25 

7.95 
8 95 

6 90 

7.50 

79.95 
19 95 

39.95 

29.95 

6.95 

7 95 
6 50 

6.50 

5.50 

6.50 
6.50 

14.95 

49.95 

14.95 , 


1771 
1791 
1793 
1795 
1797 
2791 
2793 
2795 
2797 
6843 
8272 
UPD765 
MB8876 
MB8877 
1691 
l 2143 


15 95 
23 95 

23.95 
23 95 
23 95 
39 95 
39 95 
39 95 
39 95 

34.95 

19.95 

19.95 
29 95 

34.95 
7.95 
7.95 j 


KEYBOARD 
CHIPS 

I AY5 2376 11.95 

AY5 3600 STD 11.95 
l AY5-3600 PRO 11.95. 


CLOCK 
CIRCUTS 

MM5314 4.95 

MM5369 1.95 

MM5369 EST 1.95 

MM5375 4.95 

MM58167 8.95 

MM58174 11.95 

l MSM5832 3.95 A 


CRYSTAL 

OSCILLATORS 


1.0MHz 

7.95 

8.0 

7.95 

1.8432 

7.95 

10.0 

7.95 

2.0 

7.95 

12.0 

7.95 

2.4576 

7.95 

15.0 

7.95 

2.5 

7.95 

16.0 

795 

4.0 

7.95 

18.432 

7.95 

5.0688 

7.95 

20.0 

7.95 

6.0 

7.95 

24.0 

7.95 

6.144 

7.95 





74LS00 


74LS00 

.24 

74LS189 

8.95 

74LS01 

.25 

74LS190 

89 

74LS02 

.25 

74LS191 

89 

74LS03 

.25 

74LS192 

79 

74LS04 

.24 

74LS193 

79 

74LS05 

.25 

74LS194 

69 

74LS08 

.28 

74LS195 

69 

74LS09 

.29 

74LS196 

79 

74LS10 

.25 

74LS197 

79 

74LS11 

.35 

74LS221 

89 

74LS12 

.35 

74LS240 

95 

74LS13 

.45 

74LS241 

99 

74LS14 

.59 

74LS242 

99 

74LS15 

.35 

74LS243 

99 

74LS20 

.25 

74LS244 

1.29 

74LS21 

.29 

74LS245 

149 

74LS22 

.25 

74LS247 

75 

74LS26 

.29 

74LS248 

99 

74LS27 

.29 

74LS249 

99 

74LS28 

.35 

74LS251 

.59 

74LS30 

.25 

74LS253 

59 

74LS32 

.29 

74LS257 

59 

74LS33 

.55 

74LS258 

59 

74LS37 

.35 

74LS259 

2.75 

74LS38 

.35 

74LS260 

59 

74LS40 

.25 

74LS261 

2.25 

74LS42 

.49 

74LS266 

55 

74LS47 

.75 

74LS273 

149 

74LS48 

.75 

74LS275 

3.35 

74LS49 

.75 

74LS279 

49 

74LS51 

.25 

74LS280 

198 

74LS54 

.29 

74LS283 

69 

74LS55 

.29 

74LS290 

89 

74LS63 

1.25 

74LS293 

89 

74LS73 

.39 

74LS295 

99 

74LS74 

.35 

74LS298 

89 

74LS75 

.39 

74LS299 

1.75 

74LS76 

.39 

74LS322 

5.95 

74LS78 

.49 

74LS323 

3.50 

74LS83 

.60 

74LS324 

1.75 

74LS85 

69 

74LS348 

2.50 

74LS86 

.39 

74LS352 

1.29 

74LS90 

.55 

74LS353 

129 

74LS91 

89 

74LS363 

1 35 

74LS92 

55 

74LS364 

1.95 

74LS93 

.55 

74LS365 

49 

74LS95 

.75 

74LS366 

49 

74LS96 

89 

74LS367 

.45 

74LS107 

.39 

74LS368 

45 

74LS109 

.39 

74LS373 

1.39 

74LS112 

.39 

74LS374 

1.39 

74LS113 

.39 

74LS375 

.95 

74LS114 

.39 

74LS377 

1.39 

74LS122 

.45 

74LS378 

1 18 

74LS123 

.79 

74LS379 

1.35 

74LS124 

2.90 

74LS385 

3.90 

74LS125 

.49 

74LS386 

45 

74LS126 

.49 

74LS390 

1.19 

74LS132 

.59 

74LS393 

1.19 

74LS133 

.59 

74LS395 

1.19 

74LS136 

.39 

74LS396 

1.89 

74LS137 

.99 

74LS399 

1.49 

74LS138 

.55 

74LS424 

3.95 

74LS139 

.55 

74LS447 

95 

74LS145 

1.20 

74LS490 

1.95 

74LS147 

2.49 

74LS540 

1.95 

74LS148 

1.35 

74LS541 

1.95 

74LS151 

.55 

74LS624 

3.99 

74LS153 

.55 

74LS640 

2.20 

74LS154 

1.90 

74LS645 

2.20 

74LS155 

.69 

74LS668 

169 

74LS156 

69 

74LS669 

1.89 

74LS157 

.65 

74LS670 

1.49 

74LS158 

.59 

74LS674 14.95 

74LS160 

.69 

74LS682 

3.20 

74LS161 

65 

74LS683 

3.20 

74LS162 

.69 

74LS684 

3.20 

74LS163 

.65 

74LS685 

3.20 

74LS164 

.69 

74LS688 

2.40 

74LS165 

.95 

74LS689 

3.20 

74LS166 

1.95 

81LS95 

149 

74LS168 

1.75 

81LS96 

1.49 

74LS169 

1.75 

25LS2518 4.13 

74LS170 

1.49 

25LS2521 2.80 

74LS173 

69 

25LS2538 3.74 

74LS174 

.55 

25LS2569 2.80 

74LS175 

.55 

26LS31 

2.19 

174LS181 

2.15 

26LS32 

2.19 J 


diSJDR Microdevices 

■ ■ 1224 S. Bascom Avenue, San Jose, CA 95128 
800-538-5000 • 800-662-6279 (CA) • (408) 995-5430 
FAX (408) 275-8415 • Telex 171-110 


Copyright 1984 JDR Microdevice* 


RETAIL STORE - 1256 S. BASCOM AVENUE 
HOURS: M-W-F, 9-5 TU-TH, 9-9 SAT, 10-3 

PLEASE USE YOUR CUSTOMER NUMBER WHEN ORDERING 

TERMS: Minimum order $10.00. For shipping and handling include 
$2.50 for UPS Ground and S3.50 for UPS Air. Orders over 1 lb. and 
foreign orders may require additional shipping charges - please 
contact our sales department for the amount. CA. residents must 
include 6% sales tax. Bay Area and LA residents include 6Y*°/o. All 
merchandise is warranted for 90 days unless otherwise stated. Prices 
are subject to change without notice. We are not responsible for 
typographical errors. We reserve the right to limit quantities and to 
substitute manufacturer. All merchandise subject to prior sale. 


BYTE* FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 162 


























UMfiOfiAP 11; 0 KK 8 STATIC 0/1 QC 

OQIQCq SPEECH OQ | 

151 

rllVlDZD4r~ ID 150ns 44.90 

ooIauu synthesizer 09.1 

lu 




74S00 




CMOS 


74S00 

.32 

74S135 

.89 

74S244 

2 20 

4000 

.29 

4532 

1.95 

74S02 

.35 

74S138 

.85 

74S251 

95 

4001 

.25 

4538 

1.95 

74S03 

.35 

74S139 

.85 

74S253 

95 

4002 

.25 

4539 

1.95 

74S04 

.35 

74S140 

.55 

74S257 

95 

4006 

.89 

4541 

2.64 

74S05 

.35 

74S151 

.95 

74S258 

95 

4007 

.29 

4543 

1.19 

74S08 

.35 

74S153 

.95 

74S260 

79 

4008 

.95 

4553 

5.79 

74S09 

.40 

74S157 

.95 

74S273 

2 45 

4009 

.39 

4555 

.95 

74S10 

.35 

74S158 

.95 

74S274 

19 95 

4010 

.45 

4556 

.95 

74S11 

.35 

74S161 

1.95 

74S275 

19 95 

4011 

.25 

4558 

2.45 

74S15 

35 

74S162 

1.95 

74S280 

1.95 

4012 

.25 

4560 

4.25 

74S20 

.35 

74S163 

1.95 

74S283 

3 29 

4013 

.38 

4569 

3.49 

74S22 

.35 

74S168 

3.95 

74S287 

1.90 

4014 

.79 

4581 

1.95 

74S30 

.35 

74S169 

3.95 

74S288 

1.90 

4015 

.39 

4582 

1.95 

74S32 

40 

74S174 

.95 

74S289 

6 98 

4016 

.39 

4584 

.75 

74S37 

.88 

74S175 

.95 

74S299 

7 35 

4017 

.69 

4585 

.75 

74S38 

85 

74S180 

11.95 

74S301 

6.95 

4018 

.79 

45151 

12.95 

74S40 

.35 

74S181 

3.95 

74S373 

2 45 

4019 

.39 

4702 

12.95 

74S51 

.35 

74S182 

2.95 

74S374 

2.45 

4020 

.75 

4724 

1.50 

74S64 

.40 

74S185 

16.95 

74S381 

7 95 

4021 

.79 

74C00 

.35 

74S65 

40 

74S188 

1.95 

74S387 

1.95 

4022 

.79 

74C02 

.35 

74S74 

.50 

74S189 

6.95 

74S399 

2 95 

4023 

.29 

74C04 

.35 

74S85 

1.99 

74S194 

1.49 

74S412 

2.98 

4024 

.65 

74C08 

.35 

74S86 

.50 

74S195 

1.49 

74S470 

6 95 

4025 

.29 

74C10 

.35 

74S112 

.50 

74S196 

1.49 

74S471 

4 95 

4026 

1.65 

74C14 

.59 

74S113 

.50 

74S197 

1.49 

74S472 

4.95 

4027 

.45 

74C20 

.35 

74S114 

.55 

74S201 

6.95 

74S474 

4.95 

4028 

.69 

74C30 

.35 

74S124 

2.75 

74S225 

7.95 

74S570 

2 95 

4029 

.79 

74C32 

.39 

74S132 

1.24 

74S226 

3.99 

74S571 

2 95 

4030 

.39 

74C42 

1.29 

74S133 

.45 

74S240 

2.20 

74S573 

9 95 

4034 

1.95 

74C48 

1.99 

74S134 

50 

74S241 

2.20 

87S181 

16 25 

4035 

.85 

74C73 

.65 





87S185 

16 95 

4040 

.75 

74C74 

.65 








7400 

.19 

7400 

7483 .50 

74172 

5.95 

7401 

.19 

7485 

.59 

74173 

.75 

7402 

.19 

7486 

.35 

74174 

.89 

7403 

19 

7489 

2.15 

74175 

89 

7404 

.19 

7490 

.35 

74176 

89 

7405 

.25 

7491 

40 

74177 

.75 

7406 

.29 

7492 

.50 

74178 

1.15 

7407 

29 

7493 

.35 

74179 

1.75 

7408 

.24 

7494 

.65 

74180 

.75 

7409 

.19 

7495 

.55 

74181 

2.25 

7410 

19 

7496 

.70 

74182 

.75 

7411 

.25 

7497 

2.75 

74184 

2.00 

7412 

.30 

74100 

1.75 

74185 

2.00 

7413 

35 

74105 

1.14 

74189 

2.99 

7414 

49 

74107 

.30 

74190 

1.15 

7416 

.25 

74109 

.45 

74191 

1.15 

7417 

.25 

74110 

.45 

74192 

79 

7420 

.19 

74111 

.55 

74193 

.79 

7421 

.35 

74116 

1.55 

74194 

.85 

7422 

.35 

74120 

1.20 

74195 

.85 

7423 

29 

74121 

.29 

74196 

79 

7425 

.29 

74122 

.45 

74197 

.75 

7426 

.29 

74123 

.49 

74198 

1.35 

7427 

.29 

74125 

.45 

74199 

1.35 

7428 

45 

74126 

.45 

74221 

1.35 

7430 

19 

74128 

.55 

74246 

1.35 

7432 

.29 

74132 

.45 

74247 

1.25 

7433 

.45 

74136 

.50 

74248 

1.85 

7437 

.29 

74141 

.65 

74249 

1.95 

7438 

.29 

74142 

2.95 

74251 

.75 

7439 

.79 

74143 

4.95 

74259 

2.25 

7440 

.19 

74144 

2.95 

74265 

1.35 

7442 

.49 

74145 

.60 

74273 

1.95 

7443 

.65 

74147 

1.75 

74276 

1.25 

7444 

69 

74148 

1.20 

74278 

3.11 

7445 

.69 

74150 

1.35 

74279 

.75 

7446 

69 

74151 

.55 

74283 

2.00 

7447 

.69 

74152 

65 

74284 

3.75 

7448 

.69 

74153 

.55 

74285 

3.75 

7450 

19 

74154 

1.25 

74290 

95 

7451 

.23 

74155 

.75 

74293 

.75 

7453 

.23 

74156 

.65 

74298 

.85 

7454 

.23 

74157 

.55 

74351 

2 25 

7460 

.23 

74159 

1.65 

74365 

.65 

7470 

35 

74160 

.85 

74366 

65 

7472 

.29 

74161 

69 

74367 

65 

7473 

.34 

74162 

85 

74368 

.65 

7474 

.33 

74163 

69 

74376 

2.20 

7475 

.45 

74164 

.85 

74390 

1.75 

7476 

.35 

74165 

.85 

74393 

1.35 

7480 

.59 

74166 

1.00 

74425 

3.15 

7481 

1.10 

74167 

2.96 

74426 

.85 

7482 

.95 

74170 

1.65 

74490 

2.55 


4041 

4042 

4043 

4044 
4046 

| 4047 
4048 
I 4049 

4050 

4051 

4052 

4053 
4060 
4066 

4068 

4069 

4070 

4071 

4072 

4073 

4075 

4076 

4077 

4078 

4081 

4082 

4085 

4086 

4093 

4094 

4098 

4099 

14409 

14410 
| 14411 

14412 

14419 

14433 

4502 

4503 

4507 

4508 

4510 

4511 

4512 

4514 

4515 

4516 

4518 

4519 

4520 

4521 

4522 

4526 

4527 

4528 

4529 
L 4531 


74C76 .80 

74C83 1.95 

74C85 1.95 

74C86 .39 

74C89 4.50 

74C90 1.19 

74C93 1.75 

74C95 .99 

74C150 5.75 
74C151 2.25 
74C154 3.25 
74C157 1.75 
74C160 1.19 
7.4C161 1.19 

74C162 1.19 
74C163 1.19 
74C164 1.39 
74C165 2.00 
74C173 .79 

74C174 1.19 
74C175 1.19 
74C192 1.49 
74C193 1.49 
74C195 1.39 
74C200 5.75 
74C221 1.75 

74C244 2.25 
74C373 2.45 
74C374 2.45 
74C901 .39 

74C902 .85 

74C903 .85 

74C905 10.95 
74C906 .95 

74C907 1.00 
74C908 2.00 
74C909 2.75 
74C910 9.95 
74C911 8.95 
74C912 8.95 
74C914 1.95 
74C915 1.19 
74C918 2.75 
74C920 17.95 
74C921 15.95 
74C922 4.49 
74C923 4.95 
74C925 5.95 
74C926 7.95 
74C927 7.95 
74C928 7.95 
74C929 19.95 
74C930 4.95 
80C95 .85 

80C96 
80C97 
80C98 


HIGH SPEED CMOS 

. A new family of high speed CMOS logic featuring 
the speed of low power Schottky (8ns typical gate prop¬ 
agation delay), combined with the advantages of CMOS: 
very low power consumption, superior noise immunity. 
| and improved output drive. 

74HC00 

74HC: Operate at CMOS logic levels and are ideal 
for new. all-CMOS designs 
I 74HC00 
1 74HC02 
74HC04 
74HC08 
74HC10 
74HC11 
74HC14 
74HC20 
74HC27 
74HC30 
74HC32 
I 74HC51 
I 74HC74 
1 74HC75 
74HC85 
74HC86 
74HC93 
74HC125 
74HC132 
74HC138 
74HC139 
74HC151 
74HC153 
I 74HC154 
I 74HC157 
1 74HC161 
74HC164 
74HC166 
74HC174 


74HCT00 
74HCT02 
74HCT04 
74HCT08 
74HCT10 
74HCT11 
74HCT14 
74HCT20 
74HCT27 
74HCT30 
74HCT32 
74HCT51 
74HCT74 
74HCT75 
74HCT85 
74HCT86 
74HCT93 
74HCT125 
74HCT132 
74HCT138 
74HCT139 
74HCT151 
74HCT153 
74HCT154 
74HCT157 
74HCT161 
74HCT164 
74HCT166 
L 74HCT174 


9 SPECTR0NICS 
CORPORATION 

EPROM ERASERS 

Capacity Intensity 
Timer Chip (uW/Cm 2 ) 


.59 

74HC175 

.99 

.59 

74HC193 

1.25 

.59 

74HC194 

1.04 

.59 

74HC195 

1.09 

.59 

74HC238 

1.35 

.59 

74HC240 

1.89 

.79 

74HC241 

1.89 

.59 

74HC242 

1.89 

.59 

74HC243 

1.89 

.59 

74HC244 

1.89 

.69 

74HC245 

1.89 

.59 

74HC251 

.89 

.75 

74HC257 

.85 

.85 

74HC259 

1.39 

1.35 

74HC273 

1.89 

.69 

74HC299 

4.99 

1.19 

74HC367 

.99 

1.19 

74HC373 

2.29 

1.19 

74HC374 

2.29 

.99 

74HC393 

1.39 

.99 

74HC4017 

1.99 

.89 

74HC4020 

1.39 

.89 

74HC4024 

1.59 

2.49 

74HC4040 

1.39 

.89 

74HC4049 

.89 

1.15 

74HC4050 

.89 

1.25 

74HC4060 

1.29 

2.95 

74HC4511 

2.39 

.99 

74HC4538 

2.29 

74HCT00 


;t. drop-in replacements for LS TTL and 

ad with 74LS in the same circuit 


.69 

74HCT175 

1.09 

69 

74HCT193 

1.39 

.69 

74HCT194 

1.19 

.69 

74HCT195 

1.29 

.69 

74HCT238 

1.49 

.69 

74HCT240 

2.19 

.89 

74HCT241 

2.19 

.69 

74HCT242 

2.19 

.69 

74HCT243 

2.19 

.69 

74HCT244 

2.19 

.79 

74HCT245 

2.19 

.69 

74HCT251 

1.09 

.85 

74HCT257 

99 

.95 

74HCT259 

1.59 

1.49 

74HCT273 

2.09 

.79 

74HCT299 

5.25 

1.29 

74HCT367 

1.09 

1.29 

74HCT373 

2.49 

1.29 

74HCT374 

2.49 

1.15 

74HCT393 

1.59 

1.15 

74HCT4017 

2.19 

1.05 

74HCT4020 

1.59 

1.05 

74HCT4024 

1.79 

2.99 

74HCT4040 

1.59 

.99 

74HCT4049 

.99 

1.29 

74HCT4050 

.99 

1.39 

74HCT4060 

1.49 

3.05 

74HCT4511 

2.69 

1.09 

74HCT4538 

2.59 


PE-14 
PE 14T 
PE-24T 
PL 265T 
PR-125T 
i PR 320T 


8,000 

8,000 

9.600 

9.600 

17,000 

17,000 


$83.00 
$119.00 
$175.00 
$255.00 
$349.00 
$595.00 , 


r transistorsI 

2N918 

.50 

2N3772 

1.85 

MPS918 

.25 

2N3903 

.25 

2N2102 

.75 

2N3904 

.10 

2N2218 

.50 

2N3906 

.10 

2N2218A 

.50 

2N4122 

.25 

2N2219 

.50 

2N4123 

.25 

2N2219A 

.50 

2N4249 

.25 

2N2222 

.25 

2N4304 

.75 

PN2222 

.10 

2N4401 

.25 

MPS2369 

.25 

2N4402 

.25 

2N2484 

.25 

2N4403 

.25 

2N2905 

.50 

2N4857 

1.00 

2N2907 

.25 

PN4916 

.25 

PN2907 

.13 

2N5086 

.25 

2N3055 

.79 

PN5129 

-25 

3055T 

.69 

PN5139 

.25 

2N3393 

.30 

2N5209 

.25 

2N3414 

.25 

2N6028 

.35 

2N3563 

.40 

2N6043 

1.75 

2N3565 

.40 

2N6045 

1.75 

PN3565 

.25 

MPS-A05 

.25 

MPS3638 

.25 

MPS-A06 

.25 

MPS3640 

.25 

MPSA13 

.40 

PN3643 

.25 

MPS-A55 

.25 

PN3644 

.25 

MPU 131 

.99 

MPS3704 

.15 

TIP29 

.65 

MPS3706 

.15 

TIP31 

.75 

L 


TIP32 

•79 a 


1C 

SOCKETS 


ST 

.13 

.11 

ST 

.15 

.12 

ST 

.17 

.13 

ST 

.20 

18 

ST 

.29 

.27 

ST 

.30 

.27 

ST 

.30 

27 

ST 

.40 

32 

ST 

.49 

.39 

ST 

4.25CALL 


ST=SOLDERTAIL 


8 PIN 
14 PIN 
16 PIN 
18 PIN 
20 PIN 
22 PIN 
24 PIN 
28 PIN 
40 PIN 


WW .59 .49 
WW .69 .52 
WW 69 .58 
WW .99 .90 
WW 1.09 .98 
WW 1.39 1.28 
WW 1.49 1.35 
WW 1.69 1.49 
WW 1.99 1.80 


INTERFACE 

8T26 1.59 

8T28 198 

8T95 .89 

8T96 .89 

8T97 .89 

8T98 89 

DM8131 2.95 

DP8304 2.29 

DS8833 2.25 

DS8835 1.99 

DS8836 99 

DS8837 1.65 

DS8838 1.30 

INTERSIL 

ICL7106 9.95 

ICL7107 12.95 

ICL7660 2.95 

ICL8038 3.95 

ICM7207A 5.59 

ICM7208 15.95 


DATA AQC^ 

ADC0800 15.55 
ADC0804 3.49 

ADC0809 4.49 

ADC0816 14.95 
ADC0817 9.95 

ADC0831 8.95 

DAC0800 4.49 

DAC0806 1.95 

DAC0808 2.95 

DAC1020 8.25 

DAC1021 7.95 

DAC1022 5.95 

MC1408L6 1.95 
MC1408L8 2.95 

EXAR 

XR2206 3.75 

XR2207 3.75 

XR2208 3.75 

XR2211 5.25 

XR2240 3.25 , 


r 9000 1 

9304 

.95 

9316 

1.00 

9328 

1.49 

9334 

2.50 

9368 

3.95 

9401 

9.95 

9601 

.75 

9602 

1.50 

9637 

2.95 

L96S02 

1.95J 


SOUND 

CHIPS 

I 76477 3.95 

| 76488 5.95 

76489 8.95 

I SSI 263 39.95 

AY3 8910 12.95 
AY3-8912 12.95 
MC3340 1.49 

LSP1000 39.00 , 


OPTO-ISOLATORS 


4N26 
4N27 
4N28 
4N33 
4N35 
4N37 
MCT-2 
L MCT-6 


1.00 MCA-7 4.25 

1.10 MCA-225 1.75 

.69 IL-1 1.25 

1.75 I LA-30 1.25 

1.25 ILQ-74 2.75 

1.25 H11C5 1.25 

1.00 TIL-111 1.00 

1.50 TIL-113 1.75 j 


MICRODEVICES 

AT 

MICROPRICES 

c Copyright 1984 JDR Microdevices 


VOLTAGE 

REGULATORS 

TO-220 CASE PACKAGE 


7805T 

.75 

7905T 

7808T 

.75 

7908T 

7812T 

.75 

7912T 

7815T 

.75 

7915T 

7824T 

.75 

7924T 


TO-3 CASE PACKAGE 

I 7805K 1.39 7905K 1.4 

7812K 1.39 7912K 1.4 

7815K 1.39 7915K 1.4 

| 7824K 1.39 7924K 1.4 

TO-92 CASE PACKAGE 

| 78L05 .69 79L05 .7 

78L12 .69 79L12 .1 

| 78L15 .69 79L15 .7 

OTHER VOLTAGE REGS 

I 78M05C 5volt v,amp TO-220 .3 

LM323K 5volt 3amp TO 3 4.9 

LM338K Adj 5amp TO-3 3.9 

I 78H05K 5volt 5amp TO-3 9.9 

78H12K 12volt 5amp TO 3 9-9 

78P05K 5volt lOamp TO-3 14.9 

l UA78S40 FAIRCHILD DIP 1.9 






LM301 

LINEAR 

.34 LM567 

.89 

LM301H 

.79 

NE570 

3.95 

LM307 

.45 

NE571 

2.95 

LM308 

.69 

NE590 

2.50 

LM308H 

1.15 

NE592 

.98 

LM309H 

1.95 

LM709 

.59 

LM309K 

1.25 

LM710 

75 

LM310 

1.75 

LM711 

.79 

LM311 

.64 

LM723 

.49 

LM311H 

.89 

LM723H 

.55 

LM312H 

1.75 

LM733 

.98 

LM317K 

3.95 

LM741 

.35 

LM317T 

1.19 

LM741N-14 .35 

LM318 

1.49 

LM741H 

.40 

LM318H 

1.59 

LM747 

.69 

LM319H 

1.90 

LM748 

.59 

LM319 

1.25 

LM1014 

1.19 

LM320 see7900 

LM1303 

1.95 

LM322 

1.65 

LM 1310 

1.49 

LM323K 

4.95 

MCI 330 

1.69 

LM324 

.59 

MCI 349 

1.89 

LM329 

.65 

MCI 350 

1.19 

LM331 

3.95 

MCI 358 

1.69 

LM334 

1.19 

MCI 372 

6.95 

LM335 

1.40 

LM1414 

1.59 

LM336 

1.75 

LM1458 

.59 

LM337T 

1.95 

LM1488 

.69 

LM337K 

3.95 

LM1489 

.69 

LM338K 

3.95 

LM1496 

.85 

LM339 

.99 

LM1558H 

3.10 

LM340 see7800 

LM1800 

2.37 

LM348 

.99 

LM 1812 

8.25 

LM350K 

4.95 

LM1830 

3.50 

LM350T 

4.60 

LM1871 

5.49 

LM358 

.69 

LM1872 

5.49 

LM359 

1.79 

LM1877 

3.52 

LM376 

3.75 

LM1889 

1.95 

LM377 

1.95 

LM1896 

1.75 

LM378 

2.50 

ULN2003 

1.29 

LM379 

4.50 

XR2206 

3.75 

LM380 

89 

LM2877 

2.05 

LM380N 8 1.10 

LM2878 

2.25 

LM381 

1.60 

LM29O0 

.85 

LM382 

1.60 

LM2901 

1.00 

LM383 

1.95 

MPQ2907 

1.95 

LM384 

1.95 

LM2917 

2.95 

LM386 

.89 

LM3900 

.59 

LM387 

1.40 

LM3905 

1.25 

LM389 

1.35 

LM3909 

.98 

LM390 

1.95 

LM3911 

2.25 

LM392 

.69 

LM3914 

3.95 

LM393 

1.29 

LM3915 

3.95 

LM394H 

4.60 

LM3916 

3.95 

LM399H 

5.00 

MC4024 

3.95 

NE531 

2.95 

MC4044 

4.50 

NE555 

.34 

RC4136 

1.25 

NE556 

.65 

RC4151 

3.95 

NE558 

1.50 

LM4250 

1.75 

NE564 

2.95 

LM4500 

3.25 

LM565 

.99 

RC4558 

.69 

LM566 

1.49 

LM 13600 

1.49 



LM 13700 

1.45 


H=TO-5 CAN, K=TO 3. T=TO-220 

RCA 


CA3023 

2.75 

CA3083 

1.55 

CA3039 

1.29 

CA3086 

80 

CA3046 

1.25 

CA3089 

2.99 

CA3059 

2.90 

CA3096 

3.49 

CA3060 

2.90 

CA3130 

1.30 

CA3065 

1.75 

CA3140 

1.15 

CA3080 

1.10 

CA3146 

1.85 

CA3081 

1.65 

CA3160 

1.19 

CA3082 

1.65 CA3183 

Tl 

.99 

TL494 

4.20 

75365 

1.95 

TL496 

1.65 

75450 

.59 

TL497 

3.25 

75451 

.39 

75107 

1.49 

75452 

.39 

75108 

1.49 

75453 

39 

75110 

1.95 

75454 

.39 

75150 

1.95 

75491 

.79 

75154 

1.95 

75492 

.79 

75188 

1.25 

75493 

.89 

75189 

1.25 

Bl 

75494 

FET 

.89 

TL066 

.99 

LF347 

2.19 

TL071 

.79 

LF351 

.60 

TL072 

119 

LF353 

1.00 

TL074 

2.19 

LF355 

1.10 

TL081 

.79 

LF356 

1.10 

TL082 

1.19 

LF357 

1.40 

TL083 

1.19 

LF411 

1.29 

TL084 

2.19 

LF412 

1.99 


Inquiry 162 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 473 



















i ; 


OKQ RS232 
£U0 FEMALE SOLDER CUP 


2.25 


BARGAIN HUNTERS CORNER 
BMC BX-80 PRINTER 

* 80 CPS DOT MATRIX PRINTER 

* PRINTS BI-DIRECTIONAL IN 40, 80, 
71 OR 142 COLUMNS IN NORMAL. 
DOUBLE WIDTH OR COMPRESSED 
TEXT. 

* PRINT SUPERSCRIPT AS WELL AS 
SUPERB GRAPHICS IN CHARACTER 
OR BIT IMAGE. 


$199.95 



RF 

MODULATOR 

(ASTEC UM1082) 

QUANTITIES LIMITED 

* PRESET TO CHANNEL 3 

* USE TO BUILD TV- 
COMPUTER INTERFACE 

* +5 VOLT OPERATION 


$ 6.95 



VIDEO RF OUT 


SPECIAL ENDS 3/31/85 


HARD TO FIND 

"SNAPABLE" HEADERS 

Can easily be snapped apart to make 
any size header, all with .1" centers 
1x36 STRAIGHT LEAD .99 

2x40 STRAIGHT LEAD 2.49 

2x40 RIGHT ANGLE 2.99 

SHORTING BLOCKS 

SPACED AT 1"CENTERS 
IDEAL FOR DISK DRIVES 
OR ANY .1" HEADER 

5/1.00 , 




r EDGECARD 1 
CONNECTORS 

DIP 1 

SWITCHES 


S-100ST 

S 100 WW 

S-100 

S 100 

3.95 

4.95 

4 POSITION 

.85 


72 PIN ST 


6.95 

5 POSITION 

90 


72 PIN WW 


7.95 

6 POSITION 

.90 


62 PIN ST 

IBM PC 

4.95 

7 POSITION 

95 


50 PIN ST 

APPLE 

4.95 

8 POSITION 

.95 


44 PIN ST 


2.95 

l 10 POSITION 

1.29 J 


44 PIN WW 


4.95J 


36 PIN CENTRONICS 

IDCEN36 RIBBON CABLE MALE 8.95 

IDCEN36 F RIBBON CABLE FEMALE 8.95 
l CEN36 SOLDER CUP MALE 7.95 


DIP CONNECTORS 


DESCRIPTION 

ORDER BY 

CONTACTS 

& 

14 

1$ 

18 

20 

22 

24 

28 

40 

HIGH RELIABILITY TOOLED 

ST 1C SOCKETS 

AUGATxxST 

.99 

99 

99 

1.69 

1.89 

1 89 

1 99 

2 49 

2.99 

HIGH RELIABILITY TOOLED 
WW 1C SOCKETS 

AUGATxxWW 

1.30 

1.80 

2.10 

2.40 

2.50 

2.90 

3.15 

3.70 

5.40 

COMPONENT CARRIES 
(DIP HEADERS) 

ICCxx 

.49 

.59 

69 

.99 

99 

.99 

.99 

1.09 

1.49 

RIBBON CABLE 

DIP PLUGS (IDC) 

IDPxx 

- 

95 

.95 

... 

- 

... 

1 75 

... 

2.95 

FOR ORDERING INSTRUCT 

ONSS 

EE IDC CONNECT 

ORSB 

1 ELOW 


i ; 



DCOQO 

MALE SOLDER CUP 1 


EMI FILTER 

* MAJOR MANUFACTURER 

* LOW COST 

* FITS LC HP BELOW 

$4.95 

LINE CORDS 

I LC-2 2 CONDUCTOR 6 ft .39 

LC-3 3 CONDUCTOR 6 ft 99 

| LC-HP 3 CONDUCTOR WITH STANDARD 
FEMALE SOCKET 6 ft 1.49 

I LC-CIR CIGARETTE LIGHTER 

PLUG WITH 6 ft COILED CORD 2.95 

MUFFIN FANS 

I 4.68" SQUARE 
L3"SQUARE 


RESISTORS 

Vi WATT 5% CARBON FILM 
ALL STANDARD VALUES 
FROM 1 OHM TO 10 MEG OHM 

50 PIECES SAME VALUE .025 

100 PIECES SAME VALUE .02 

L 1000 PIECES SAME VALUE .015 


BYPASS CAPS 

.01 pf DISC 100 86.00 

.01 //f MONOLITHIC 100 $12 00 

.1 DISC 100 $8.00 

.1 //f MONOLITHIC 100/915.00 J 


1N751 

DIODES 

5 1 VOLT ZENER 

.25 

1N759 

12 0 VOLT ZENER 

.25 

1N4148 

(1N914ISWITCHING 

25/1.00 

1N4001 

50PIV 1A 

12/1.00 

1N4004 

4O0PIV RECTIFIER 

10/1.00 

1N5402 

200PIV 3A 

.25 

KBP02 

200PIV 1 5A BRIDGE 

.45 

KBP04 

400PIV 1 5A BRIDGE 

.55 

MDA801 

50PIV 12A BRIDGE 

1.39 

MDA980-1 

50PIV 12A BRIDGE 

1.95 

MDA980-2 

100PIV 12A BRIDGE 

2.25 

IVM48 

DIP BRIDGE 

.35 J 


HEAT SINKS 

I TO 220 SCREW ON 

TO-220 CLIP ON 

TO-3 SCREW ON 

TO-220 INSULATOR 

TO-3 INSULATOR 


CAPACITORS 

TANTALUM 

35V .50 


I.Opf 

15V 

.40 

.47/yf 

6 8 

15V 

.70 

1.0 

10 

15V 

.80 

2.2 

22 

15V 

1.35 

4.7 

.22 

35V 

.40 

10 



DISC 

10 pf 

50V 

.05 

560 

22 

50V 

05 

680 

25 

50V 

05 

820 

27 

50V 

05 

001//f 

33 

50V 

.05 

.0015 

47 

50V 

.05 

.0022 

56 

50V 

.05 

.005 

68 

50V 

.05 

.01 

82 

50V 

.05 

.02 

100 

50V 

.05 

05 

220 

50V 

.05 

.1 


35V 
35V 
35V .85 

35V 1.00 


50V 

50V 

50V 

50V 

50V 

50V 

50V 

50V 

50V 

50V 

12V 


MONOLITHIC 

01/yf 50V .14 -1/zf 50V 
047j/f 50 V .15 .47//f 50 V 

ELECTROLYTIC 


RADIAL 

25V .14 

35V 
50V 
50V 
35V 


100 

220 

470 

2200 


16V .18 

35V .20 

25V .30 

16V .60 


COMPUTER 

GRADE 

L 44,000/if 30V 3.95 


47 

100 

100 

220 

330 

550 

1000 

2200 

6000 


AXIAL 

50V 

16V 

16V 

50V 

16V 

50V 

15V 

35V 

25V 

16V 

16V 

16V 

16V 

16V 


LED DISPLAYS 


HP5082 7760 
I MAN-72 
| MAN-74 
FND 357(359) 
FND 500(503) 
FND-507(51 0) 


CC .43" 

CA .3" 

CC .3" 

CC .375" 

CC .5" 

CA .5" 


L TIL-311 4x7 HEX W LOGIC .270" 


DIFFUSED LEDS 


10 1.00 
10 / 1.00 


SWITCHES 

SPOT MINI TOGGLE ON ON 
DPDT MINI-TOGGLE ON-ON 
DPDT MINI TOGGLE ON OFF ON 
SPST MINI PUSHBUTTON N O. 

SPST MINI PUSHBUTTON N.C. 

I BCD OUT 10 POSITION 6 PIN DIP 1.95; 




1-99 

100-up 

JUMBO RED 

TIV 4 

.10 

.09 

JUMBO GREEN 

T1V« 

.18 

.15 

JUMBO YELLOW 

T1V« 

.18 

.15 

MOUNTING HDW T1V* 

10 

.09 

MINI RED 

T1 

.10 

09 

MINI GREEN 

T1 

.18 

.15 

MINI YELLOW 

T1 

.18 

.15 

RECT RED 

2 x5mm 

.25 

.22 

RECT GREEN 

2 x 5 m m 

.30 

.27 

RECT YELLOW 

2 x 5 m m 

.30 

.27 


D-SUBMINIATURE 


DESCRIPTION 

ORDER BY 

CONTACTS 

9 

15 

25 

37 

50 

SOLDER CUP 

MALE 

DBxxP 

1.19 

1.59 

1.90 

2.85 

4.25 

FEMALE 

DBxxS 

1.50 

1.85 

2.25 

3 90 

5.25 

RIGHT ANGLE 

PC SOLDER 

MALE 

DBxxPR 

1.65 

2.20 

3.00 

483 

— 

Female 

DBxxSR 

2.18 

3.03 

3.00 

6.19 

— 

WIRE WRAP 

MALE 

DBxxPWW 

1.69 

2.56 

3.89 

5.60 

— 

FEMALE 

DBxxSWW 

2.76 

4.27 

6.84 

9.95 

— 

IOC RIBBON CABLE 

MALE 

IDBxxP 

2.95 

3.90 

4 75 

6 95 

— 

FEMALE 

IDBxxS 

3.25 

4.29 

5.25 

7.9$ 

— 

HOODS 

BLACK 

HOO 6 & 



.99 


— 

T5RF7- 

HOOD 

89 

99 

99 

1.09 

1.19 


MOUNTING HARDWARE-$1.00 

FOR ORDERING INSTRUCTIONS SEE IDC CONNECTORS BELOW 




TEXTOOLZERO INSERTION FORCE 
SOCKETS AND RECEPTACLES 



SCREWDRIVER CLAMP 
ECONO ZIF 


LEVER CLAMP 
ZIF SOCKET 



WW RECEPTACLES 
ZIF RECEPTACLE 


TYPE 

CONTACTS 

14 

16 

24 

28 

40 

ECONO ZIF 

_ 

4.95 

6.75 

7 75 

9.95 

[Mf reoftacle 

4 95 

4 95 

5 95 

6.95 

9.95 


IDC CONNECTORS 


RIBBON CABLE 


DESCRIPTION 

ORDER BY 

CONTACTS 

10 

20 

26 

34 

40 

50 

SOLDER HEADER 

IDHxxS 

.82 

1 29 

1 68 

2.20 

2.58 

3.24 

RIGHT ANGLE SOLDER HEADER 

IDHxxSR 

.85 

1 35 

1 76 

231 

i.i 2 

3.39 

WW HEADER 

IDHxxW 

1.86 

2.98 

384 

4.50 

5.2$ 

6.63 

RIGHT ANGLE WW HEADER 

IDHxxWR 

2.05 

3 28 

4.Ji 

4.45 

4 $0 

7.30 

RIBBON HEADER SOCKET 

IDSxx 

79 

99 

1 39 

1.5$ 

199 

2.25 

RIBBON HEADER 

IDMxx 


5.50 

6 25 

7.00 

756 

8.50 

RIBBON EDGE CARD 

IDExx 

1.75 

2.25 

2 . 6 $ 

2.75 

3.80 

3.$5 


ORDERING INSTUCTIONS: INSERT THE NUMBER OF CONTACTS IN THE POSITION MARKED *xx" OF THE 
, -ORDER BY" PART NUMBER LISTED EXAMPLE A 10 PIN RIGHT ANGLE HOLDER STYLE WOULD BE IDH10SR 


SSSJDR Microdevices 

■ ■ 1224 S. Bascom Avenue, San Jose, CA 95128 
800-538-5000 • 800-662-6279 (CA) • (408) 995-5430 
FAX (408) 275-8415 • Telex 171-110 


CONTACTS 

SINGLE COLOR 

COLOR CODED 

V 

10 ' 

1 * 

10 ’ 

10 

.18 

1.60 

.83 

7.30 

16 

.28 

2.50 

1.00 

8 80 

20 

36 

3.20 

1.25 

11.00 

25 

.45 

4.00 

1.32 

11 60 

26 

.46 

4.10 

1.32 

11.60 

34 

.61 

5.40 

1.65 

14.50 

40 

.72 

6.40 

1.92 

16 80 

50 

.89 

7.50 

2.50 

22.00 



RETAIL STORE - 1256 S. BASCOM AVENUE 
HOURS: M-W-F. 9-5 TU-TH. 9-9 SAT, 10-3 

PLEASE USE YOUR CUSTOMER NUMBER WHEN ORDERING 

TERMS: Minimum order $10.00. For shipping and handling include 
S2.50 for UPS Ground and $3.50 for UPS Air. Orders over 1 lb and 
foreign orders may require additional shipping charges - please 
contact our sales department for the amount. CA. residents must 
include 6% sales tax. Bay Area and LA residents include 6V»%. All 
merchandise is warranted tor 90 days unless otherwise stated. Prices 
are subject to change without notice. We are not responsible for 
typographical errors. We reserve the right to limit quantities and to 
substitute manufacturer. All merchandise subject to prior sale 


Copyright 1984 JDR Microdevices 


474 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 163 




























































































































in 



pi 

p 

p 

Dill 

fflTV 

p 

E | 

P 

A 

Rl 

% 

Id 



rl 

U 

r 

llUl 

Ul V 

1 

C 1 

III 

H 

III 

1 WITH DECODING CIRCUITRY 


WIRE WRAP 
PROTOTYPE CARDS 

FR-4 EPOXY GLASS LAMINATE 
WITH GOLD-PLATED EDGE-CARD FINGERS 


DISK DRIVES 

TANDON 



IBM-PR2 | B |y| 

BOTH CARDS HAVE SILK SCREENED LEGENDS 
AND INCLUDES MOUNTING BRACKET 

IBM PR1 WITH «5V AND GROUND PLANE .... $27.95 
IBM PR2 AS ABOVE WITH DECODING CIRCUITRY $29.95 

S-100 

P100 1 BARE NO FOIL PADS .$15.15 

PI00-2 HORIZONTAL BUS.$21.80 

PI 00 3 VERTICAL BUS.$21.80 

PI00 4 SINGLE FOIL PADS PER HOLE.$22.75 

APPLE 

P500-1 BARE NO FOIL PADS .$15.15 

P500-3 HORIZONTAL BUS.$23.75 

P500-4 SINGLE FOIL PADS PER HOLE.$21.80 

7060 45 FOR APPLE lie AUX SLOT.$30.00 

GENERAL PURPOSE 

22/44 PIN EDGE-CARD (.156'’ SPACING) 

P441-1 BARE NO FOIL PADS 4.5” x 6.0".$9.45 

P441-3 VERTICAL BUS 4.5" x 6.0".$13.95 

P441 4 SINGLE FOIL PADS 4.5" x 6.0".$14.20 

P442-1 BARE - NO FOIL PADS 4.5" x 9.0" .... $10.40 

P442-3 VERTICAL BUS 4.5" x 9.0".$14.20 

P442-4 SINGLE FOIL PADS 4.5" x 9.0”.$13.50 

36/72 PIN EDGE-CARD (. 1" SPACING) 

P721-1 BARE NO FOIL PADS 4.5" x 6.0".$9.45 

P721-3 VERTICAL BUS 4.5" x 6.0".$13.25 

P721-4 SINGLE FOIL PADS 4.5" x 6.0".$14.20 

P722-1 BARE NO FOIL PADS 4.5" x 9.0" .... $10.40 

P722-3 VERTICAL BUS 4.5" x 9.0".$14.20 

P722-4 SINGLE FOIL PADS 4.5" x 9.0".$15.15 

BARE GLASS BOARDS EXTENDER 

NO EDGE-CARD FINGERS OR FOIL CARDS 

P25x45 2.5" x 4.5" $2.40 IBM $45.00 

P45x65 4.5" x 6.5" $4.70 APPLE $45.00 

P45x85 4.5" x 8.5" $6.20 MULTIBUS $86.00 

P45x170 4.5" x 17.0" $11.35 

P85x170 8.5" x 17.0" $18.95 


TM 100-1 5V«"(FOR IBM) SS/DD 
TM 100-2 5V«" (FOR IBM) DS/DD 

MPI 

MPI-B52 5V«" (FOR IBM) DS/DD 

TEAC 

FD-55B ’/ 2 HEIGHT DS/DD 
FD-55F Vi HEIGHT DS/QUAD 

SHUGART 

SA 400L 5V«" (40 TRACK) SS/DD 
SA 460 5V«" (80 TRACK) DS/QUAD 

8" DISK DRIVES 

FD100-8 BY SIEMENS. SHUGART 801 EQUIV 

SS/DD 10/S129.95 ea. $149.95 

FD200-8 BY SIEMENS. SHUGART 851 EQUIV 

DS/DD 10/$185 00ea $$195.00 

JFORMAT-2 $49.95 

SUPPORT FOR QUAD DENSITY DRIVES 
FROM TALL TREE SYSTEMS 


$199.00 

$199.95 


$139.95 


$139.95 

$ 200.00 


$199.95 

$199.95 



TEAC FD-55B 



TANDON TM 100-2 

PLEASE INCLUDE SUFFICENT AMOUNT FOR SHIPPING ON ABOVE ITEMS 


DISK DRIVE 
CABINETS 

CABINET #1 $29.95 

* Fits one full height 5Y4"disk drive 

* Color matches Apple 

CABINET #2 $79.00 

* Fits one full height 5V«"disk drive 

* Complete with power supply, switch, 
line cord, fuse and standard power 
connector 

* Please specify Grey or Tan 

CABINET #3 $89.95 

* Fits two half height 5V«"disk drives 

* Complete with power supply, switch, 
line cord, fuse and standard power 
connectors 

8" DISK DRIVE CABINETS 
ALSO AVAILABLE-PLEASE CALL 

PLEASE INCLUDE SUFFICIENT 
AMOUNT FOR SHIPPING ON ABOVE ITEMS 


SWITCHING 
POWER SUPPLIES 

PS-IBM $175.00 

* FOR IBM PC-XT COMPATIBLE 

* 130 WATTS 

* *5V @ 15A, +12V <g> 4.2A 
5V (S) 5A, -12V @ .5A 

* ONE YEAR WARRANTY 




PS-A 


$49.95 


- USE TO POWER APPLE TYPE 
SYSTEMS 

. +5V ( 3 ) 4A, +12V @ 2.5A 
-5V@.5A. -12V@.5A 
APPLE POWER CONNECTOR 


PS-3 


$39.95 


* AS USED IN APPLE III 

* +5V ( 5 ) 4A, +12V <g> 2.5A 

- -5V @ 25A, -12V @ 30A, 

» 15.5” x 4.5" x 2". .884 LBS. 


PS-ASTEC 


$19.95 


WIRE WRAP WIRE 

PRECUT AND STRIPPED 


Note: 1 inch of insulation is stripped on 
each end. A 3.5" wire has only 1.5" of insu¬ 
lation. 

QUANTITY 

500 1000 


LENGTH 
(INCHES) 100 


TRANSFORMERS 

FRAME STYLE 

2 AMP 
2 AMP 
4 AMP 
8 AMP 
2 AMP 


12.6V AC 
12.6V AC CT 
12.6V AC CT 
12.6V AC CT 
25.2V AC CT 


4.95 

5.95 

7.95 
10.95 

7.95 

PLUG CASE STYLE 


2.5 


4.70 
4.70 
5.00 
5.40 
5.75 
6.10 
6.50 
6.85 
7.80 
8.20 
8.55 
8.95 
9.30 
9 80 
10.00 
10.50 


8.20 
8.20 
8 90 
9.60 

10.30 
11.00 
11.75 
12.50 

14.30 
15.05 
15.85 
16.60 
17.40 
18.15 
18.95 
19.70 


12V AC 
12V AC 
12V AC 
12V AC 


250ma 

500ma 

1 AMP 

2 AMP 


3.95 
4 95 

5.95 

6.95 


DC ADAPTER 

6, 9, 12V DC SELECTABLE WITH 
i UNIVERAL ADAPTER 8.95 


* CAN POWER TWO 5V«" FDDS 

* +5V ( 3 ) 2.5A, 12V ( 5 ) 2A 

12V @ .1A 

. +5V (a> 5A IF +12V IS NOT USED 

* 6.3 "x 4.0" x 1.9" 


MICROCOMPUTER 
HARDWARE 
HANDBOOK 
FROMELCOMP $14.95 

| Over 800 pages of manufacturer's 
data sheets on the most commonly 
I used IC's 

* TTL - 74, 74LS 8. 74F 

* CMOS 

* Voltage regulators 

* Memory RAM, ROM, EPROM 

* CPU'S 6800, 6500, Z80, 
8080, 8085 8. 8086/8 

* MPU Support 8< Interface, 
6800, 6500. Z80, 8200, etc. 


OK INDUSTRIES 

EX-1 1C EXTRACTION TOOL 

* ONE PIECE METAL CONSTRUCTION 

* EASILY EXTRACTS 8-24 PIN DEVICES 

* LOW COST $2.19 

EX-2 1C EXTRACTION TOOL 

* EXTRACTS 24-40 PIN DEVICES 

* HEAVY DUTY METAL CONSTRUCTION 

* GROUND LUGS FOR MOS EXTRACTIONS 

* EASY ONE HAND OPERATION $12.74 

1C INSERTION TOOLS 

INS-1416 for 14-16 pin IC's $5.15 
MOS 1416 for 14-16 pin IC’s $10.92 
MOS 2428 for 24-28 pin IC's $10.92 
MOS 40 for 40 pin IC’s $12.43 

MOS series insertion tools have metal constuction 
and include grounding lug for CMOS applications. 

BW-630 WIRE WRAP GUN 

* BATTERY POWERED-USES 2 NI-CAD 
C CELLS(NOT INCLUDED) 

* POSITIVE INDEXING 

* ANTI OVERWRAP DEVICE $41.55 

WSU-30 WIRE WRAP TOOLS 

* WRAPS, STRIPS, AND UNWRAPS 

* WSU-30M WRAPS AN EXTRA TURN OF 
INSULATION 

WSU-30 $8.84/WSU-30M $10.14 
WIRE WRAP TERMINALS 


INS-1416 INS-2428 


WWT-1 
WWT-2 
WWT-3 
WWT-4 
INS 1 


SLOTTED 
SINGLE SIDED 
1C SOCKET 
DOUBLE SIDED 
INSERTION TOOL 


25/$7.06 
25 $4.25 
25/S7.06 
25/2.80 
$3.64 



VISA 


PRECUT ASSORTMENT 

IN ASSORTED COLORS $27.50 

100ea: 5.5 ", 6 ", 6.5 ", 7" 

250ea: 2.5", 4.5 ", 5" 

500ea: .3", 3.5 ", 4" 

SPOOLS 

100 feet $4.30 250 feet $7.25 

500 feet $13.25 1000 feet $21.95 
Please specify color: 

Blue, Black, Yellow or Red 


GE NICKEL CADIUM 
RECHARGABLE BATTERIES ] 
Nl CAD CHARGER PACKAGE 



ORDER TOLL FREE 


ifriimi 


800 - 662-6279 

(CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS) 


20 MHz DUAL TRACE 
OSCILLOSCOPE 

FROM 

RAMSEY ELECTRONICS 


WIRE DISPENSER 

* WITH 50' ROLL OF WIRE 

* BUILT IN PLUNGER CUTS WIRE 

* BUILT IN STRIPPER STRIPES 1" 

* REFILLABLE 

| WD-30 $6.50 WD-30TRI $9.50 

Specify Blue, white. With 50' of each: 
Yellow or Red Red, Blue and White 

SOCKET-WRAP I.D.™ 

* SLIPS OVER WIRE WRAP PINS 

* IDENTIFIES PIN NUMBERS ON WRAP 
SIDE OF BOARD 

* CAN WRITE ON PLASTIC; SUCH AS 1C » 
PINS 


WSU 30 30M 


PART# 

PCK. OF 

PRICE 

IDWRAP 08 

10 

1.95 

IDWRAP 14 

10 

1.95 

IDWRAP 16 

10 

1.95 

IDWRAP 18 

5 

1.95 

IDWRAP 20 

5 

1.95 

IDWRAP 22 

5 

1.95 

IDWRAP 24 

5 

1.95 

IDWRAP 28 

5 

1.95 

IDWRAP 40 

5 

1.95 


PLEASE ORDER BY NUMBER OF 
PACKAGES (PCK. OF) 


MULTIMETER PEN 





AAA CELLS 

QTY. 2 

$11.71 

AA CELLS 

QTY. 2 

$11.71 

C CELLS 

QTY. 2 

$13.21 

D CELLS 

QTY. 2 

$13.21 

9 VOLT 

QTY. 1 

$13.21 


BATTERIES ONLY 


AAA CELLS 

PKG. 2 

$6.07 pr. 

AA CELLS 

PKG. 1 

$3.03 ea. 

C CELLS 

PKG. 1 

$3.78 ea. 

D CELLS 

PKG. 1 

$3.78 ea. 

9 VOLT 

PKG. 1 

$7.57 ea. 


UNSURPASSED QUALITY AT AN UNBEATABLE PRICE 

* BAND WIDTH DC: DC TO 20MHz ( 3db) 

AC: 10Hz TO 20MHz (-3db) 

* SWEEP TIME- 2 /;SEC TO .5 SEC/DIV ON 20 RANGES 

* VERT. HORZ DEFLECTION: 5mV TO 20V/DIV ON 20 RANGES 

* COMPLETE MANUAL AND HIGH QUALITY 
HOOK-ON PROBES INCLUDED 

* INPUT IMPEDANCE: 1 MEG OHM 
. TV VIDEO SYNC FILTER 

* X, Y AND Z AXIS OPERATION 

* 110/220 VOLT 50/60Hz OPERATION 

* COMPONENT TESTER 

* LP CONSUMPTION-19 WATTS 

* BUILT IN CALIBRATOR 

* AUTOMATIC OR TRIGGERED TIMEBASE 


AUTO RANGING, POLARITY & DECIMAL! 


$399.95 

WITH PROBES 

FULL ONE YEAR 
WARRANTY 


* LARGE 3V 2 DIGIT DISPLAY 

* DATA HOLD SWITCH FREEZES READING 

* FAST, AUDIBLE CONTINUITY TEST 

* LOW BATTERY INDICATOR 

* OVERLOAD PROTECTION 

* ONLY 1 V." x 6V«" x V«" 

* DC VOLTS .1 mV-500V 

* AC VOLTS 1mV-500V 

* .1 OHM-20 MEG OHMS 

* WEIGHS ONLY 2.3 OUNCES 

* LOW PARTS COUNT-CUSTOM 80 PIN LSI INSURES RELIABILITY 

* INCLUDES MANUAL. BATTERIES, SOFT CASE. 2 PROBE TIPS. 
AND ALLIGATOR CLIP 




ONLY 

$49.95 


Inquiry 163 


FEBRUARY 1985 -BYTE 475 











































































TEAC-FD55B R139.95 


EPROM PROGRAMMER 

FOR APPLE COMPUTERS 

RP525 $79.95 

* LOW COST 

* DUPLICATE OR BURN ANY 
STANDARD 2700 SERIES EPROM 

* MENU DRIVEN SOFTWARE 
INCLUDED-NO ADDITIONAL 
SOFTWARE REQUIRED 

* AUTOMATIC SELECTION FOR 
2716, 2732, 2732A, 2764 & 27128 

* LED INDICATORS FOR ACTIVITY 

► HIGH SPEEDWRITE ALGORITHM 

► NO EXTERNAL POWER SUPPLY 


MPI-B52 ds f S13 



■>SIGMA DESIGNS. INC. 


MAXIMIZE YOUR IBM PC OR XTI 

MAXIMUM FLEXIBILITY-All of the most asked for sup 
port features on one card plus SOFTDISK and SPOOL 
software to increase your PC's productivity 1 
MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE PER DOLLAR-Compare fea 
tures with the best selling multifunction card and save 1 
MAXIMUM RELIABILITY-The MAXIMIZER features the 
highest quality 4-LAYER board construction, sockets 
for all RAM and is backed by a fulll 

ONE YEAR WARRANTY 



MAXIMIZER 

AST 6-PACK + 

Maximum Memory 

384K/512K 

384 K 

RS 232 Serial 

2' 

1 

Parallel Pod 

1 

1 

Clock Calendar 

YES 

YES 

Game Adaptor 

Optional 

Optional 


with optional 128K MAXISTACK 
' second serial port ODtionai 


*259 9S 

(MX) 

OPTIONS: 

2nd Serial Port I 

Game Adaptor 29.95 
128K Maxistack 159.95 
Additional 64K Ram 39.95 I 


APPLE ACCESSORIES 


BAL-525 

$139.95 


* y 2 HEIGHT ALPS MECHANISM 

* 100% APPLE COMPATIBLE 

* FULL 1 YEAR WARRANTY 




BAL-500 
$169.95 

* TEAC MECHANISM DIRECT DRIVE 

* 100% APPLE COMPATIBLE 35TRACK 

* 40 TRACK WHEN USED WITH 
OPTIONAL CONTROLLER 


MIT AC 
AD-1 
$179.95 



FULL HEIGHT SHUGART 
MECHANISM 

DIRECT REPLACEMENT FOR APPLE 
DISK II 

JDR 16K 
RAM CARD 
$39.95 

BARE PC CARD AND INSTUCTIONS $9.95 

★ 2 YEAR WARRANTY 

★ EXPAND YOUR 48K APPLE TO 64K 

★ USE IN PLACE OF APPLE LANGUAGE 
CARD 

OTHER ACCESSORIES 

BMC BX-80 $249.00 

CONTROLLER CARD $49.95 

VIEWMAX-80 $159.95 

VIEWMAX 80e $129.95 

GRAPHMAX $129.95 

THUNDERCLOCK $129.95 

KRAFT JOYSTICK $39.95 

POWER SUPPLY $49.95 

ZVM-123 GREEN MON $105.00 


DISKETTE FILE 

$8.95 


IF PURCHASED 
WITH 50 DISKETTES 
OR MORE 


$9.95 IF PURCHASED ALONE 

BY DEALING DIRECT WITH THE 
FACTORY, WE CAN MAKE THIS 
UNBEATABLE OFFER 

★ ATTRACTIVE, SMOKED ACRYLIC CASE WITH 
SIX INDEXED DIVIDERS 

★ RUGGED, HIGH QUALITY 
CONSTRUCTION 

★ HOLDS 70 5'A" 

DISKETTES, 

WITH ROOM 
TO SPARE 



NASHUA DISKETTES 

5V4 # ' soft sector 
DOUBLE SIDED, DOUBLE DENSITY 
WITH HUB RINGS 

BULK PACKAGED IN FACTORY SEALED BAGS 
OF 50. INCLUDES DISKETTE SLEEVES AND 
WRITE PROTECT TABS. IDEAL FOR SCHOOLS, 
CLUBS, AND USERS GROUPS. THIS IS A SPECIAL 
PURCHASE, QUANTITIES ARE LIMITED. 
5 YEAR WARRANTY. 


$1.39ea. 
on 250 


$1.49ea 
am oo 


$1.59ea. 

QTY50 


*NASHUA DISKETTES WERE JUDGED TO HAVE THE HIGHEST 
POLISH AND RECORDED AMPLITUDE OF ANY DISKETTES TESTED. 
(SEE “COMPARING FLOPPY DISKS". BYTE9/84) 


DISK DRIVES FOR YOUR IBM 

TEAC FD55B MPI 52B 

V 2 HEIGHT (same as Tandon) 

$139.95 


BMC AU9191U COLOR MON $279.00 1 o9o9b 


ills JDR Microdevices 

■ ■ 1224 S. Bascom Avenue, San Jose, CA 95128 
800-538-5000 • 800-662-6279 (CA) • (408) 995-5430 
FAX (408) 275-8415 • Telex 171-110 


TANDON 
TM 100-2 

$199.95 


WANT TO ADD 
AN INTERNAL 
HARD DISK 
DRIVE TO YOUR 
IBM PC? 

... BUT DISCOVER 
THAT YOUR POWER 
SUPPLY CAN'T 
HANDLE THE LOAD? 

JDR HAS CAREFULLY 
SELECTED THE HIGHEST 
QUALITY FULLY IBM 
COMPATIBLE POWER 
SUPPLY AVAILABLE. 

COMPARE 

THESE FEATURES 

* XT COMPATIBLE 

* 1 YEAR WARRANTY 

* HIGH QUALITY 
CONSTRUCTION 

* PLUG COMPATIBLE 
CONNECTORS 

* FJTS INTO EXSISTING 
MOUNTING HOLES 

* SOLID 130 WATT OUTPUT 

+5V (a) 15A +12V (a) 4.2A 
-5V@.5A -12V@.5A 



$175.00 

VERBATIM 

DATALIFE DISKETTES 


SS/DD SOFT 
SS/DD 10 SECTOR 
. DS/DD SOFT 


$29.95 

$29.95 

$34.95 


(& Copyright 1984 JDR Microdevice* 


RETAIL STORE - 1256 S. BASCOM AVENUE 
HOURS: M-W-F, 9-5 TU-TH, 9-9 SAT, 10-3 

PLEASE USE YOUR CUSTOMER NUMBER WHEN ORDERING 

TERMS: Minimum order $10.00. For shipping and handling include 
$2.50 for UPS Ground and $3.50 for UPS Air. Orders over 1 lb. and 
foreign orders may require additional shipping charges - please 
contact our sales c department for the amount. CA. residents must 
include 6% sales tax, Bay Area and LA residents include 6Wo. All 
merchandise is warranted for 90 days unless otherwise stated. Prices 
are subject to change without notice. We are not responsible for 
typographical errors. We reserve the right to limit quantities and to 
substitute manufacturer. All merchandise subject to prior sale. 

APPLE IS A TRADEMARK OF APPLE COMPUTER CO. 


476 BYT E • FEBRUARY 1985 


Inquiry 164 
























































UNCLASSIFIED ADS 


NEEDED: Information on or public-domain software 
for Commodore 64 to develop educational and 
social skills of mentally handicapped adults. Also, 
we will share the programs we have developed. Mrs. 
M. Worsman. Pennine House. 39 Well St.. Bradford. 
West Yorkshire BD1 5RE. England. 

WANTED: Information on computers/hardware to 
videotape high-resolution/double high-resolution 
drawings and animation without flickering. Want 
equipment to transform signal to NTSC or computer 
with such capability (now using an Apple lie and 
Add Wor board that does not generate true NTSC 
output). Marianne Unger. 1313 Good St.. Reading. 
PA 19602. 

NEEDED: Tkx-deductible donation of computers 
(Apple II. IBM PC. or compatible), monitors, and 
printers for Appalachian students in biology and 
pre-medicine. Shipping will be paid. Dr H. W. 
Elmore. Department of Biology. Marshall University. 
Huntington. WV 25701. (304) 696-3638 or 696-3148. 

WANTED: Donation of a Macintosh or Apple lie to 
be used by Miss Pantipa Isaramongkolpant. Multi¬ 
ple Cropping Project. Faculty of Agriculture. 
Chiangmai University. Thailand 50002. For shipping 
fee and arrangements, call John Dennis (Department 
of Rural Sociology. Cornell University. Ithaca. NY 
14850) at (607) 256-3159 

WANTED: T&x-exempt. nonprofit organization work¬ 
ing with teenagers seeks donation of personal com¬ 
puter equipment for word processing. Fully tax- 
deductible Will pay shipping. Especially interested 
in letter-quality printer. Northwest Indiana Youth for 
Christ. POB 537. Valparaiso. IN 46383. 

WANTED: Private elementary school seeks to pur¬ 
chase Apple II + at low cost or receive as donation. 
Dr. Peter Hulick. James River Day School. 5039 
Boonsboro Rd.. Lynchburg. VA 24 503 

NEEDED: Boy Scout Ttoop #397 seeks tax-deductible 
donation of Apple II. IBM PC. Kaypro. or compati¬ 
ble. TYoop #397. 243 42nd St.. Copiague. NY 11726. 

WANTED: Educational institution seeks tax- 
deductible donations of microcomputer, disk drives, 
monitor, and printer. Cardozo Computer Users' 
Group. Cardozo School of Law. 55 Fifth Ave.. New 
York. NY 10003 

WANTED: Nonprofit publisher of Education Week 
newspaper needs PC and Apple computers and pe¬ 
ripherals of all types in exchange for tax benefit and 
printed recognition. Janice Lopez. Education Week, 
1255 TWenty-third St. NW, Washington. DC 20036. 
(202) 466-5190. 

NEEDED: Nonprofit state college art department with 
computer graphics skills needs graphics equipment 
to update curriculum and improve student employ¬ 
ment profile. Anything will do: CPUs. RGB monitors, 
video input, printers, disk drives, plotters, graphics 
tablets, and video film recorder. Desmond McLean. 
Art Department. Memorial Hall. Glassboro State 
College. Glassboro. N) 08028. (609) 863-7366/7081. 

WANTED: Charitable nonprofit organization seeks 
donation of computers, peripherals, printers, moni¬ 
tors, terminals, disk drives, memory expansion, etc. 
Certified tax-deductible receipts furnished. Will pay 
reasonable shipping Holdeman International. POB 
329. West Point. MS 39773. 

WANTED: T^x-exempt. nonprofit educational 
organization seeks donation of microcomputers and 
peripherals. Donation is tax-deductible; will provide 
receipts and pay reasonable shipping. Baton Rouge 
Astronomical Society. 11683 Flamingo Dr.. Baton 
Rouge. LA 70814. 

WANTED: Information on an available cut-sheet 
feeder that accommodates 11-inch-wide paper and 
fits a Brother HR-35 printer. Michael L. Cook. 3318 
Wimberg Ave.. Evansville. IN 47712. 

FOR SALE: BYTE. September 1975 through 
December 1984 112 consecutive issues. Best offer 
for all. R. F. Nichol. 25747 Date St.. San Bernardino 
CA 92404. (714) 862-1252. 

WANTED: Documentation for Motorola Experimenter 
II 6800 board. Schematic for Burroughs EA2300 
lOcolumn calculator. Correspondence with hackers 
using T&no Dragon. APF M-l. or TS1000. B. R. Pogue. 
POB 111. Thatcher. AZ 85552. 

FOR SALE: HP 86 computer. HP interface bus 
82937A. HP dual-disk drives 2 50K each, and HP 
82913A monitor: $2500 or trade for Apple He. Rick 


Crowsey. 9599 Southeast Valley Court. Hobe Sound. 
FL 33455. (305) 840-1633 or 546-8560. 

WANTED: Religion department at private Lutheran 
college seeks donation of Apple He. TRS-80 Model 
III. or any comparable model with disk drive. 
Shannon Jung. Department of Religion. Concordia 
College. Moorhead. MN 56560. (218) 299-3435. 

FOR SALE: BYTE. July 1976 (volume 1. number 11) 
through December 1982. marked but complete: 
$190 includes UPS shipping in U.S. Jerry Nelson. 3 
Hill Rd.. St. James. NY 11780. (516) 862-9351. 

FOR SALE: Lobo MAX-80 (128K. serial ports, runs 
eight 5-inch/8-inch hard-disk drives, clock. 5-MHz 
Z80. function/numeric keypad. RAM drive) with two 
Shugart 160K drives, books, and original documen¬ 
tation: $1250. Stewart Dean. POB 120. Lake Hill. NY 
12448. (914) 679-7637. 

FOR SALE: BYTE. September 1975 through present 
in good condition. Missing May 1980 and January 
1982. $250 includes shipping. D. M. Wyckoff. 5419 
Mariposa Ave.. Citrus Heights. CA 95610. (916) 
967-6790 home. (916) 322-7484 work. 

FOR SALE: New Radio Shack Model 16B with two 
disk drives, printer, hard-disk drive, and modem. 
Haas Honda. Route 1. Box 7. Marietta. OH 45750. 
(614) 374-4044. 

FOR SALE: Magnavox Odyssey 1. the original video- 
game machine. Excellent condition: make an offer 
William Blair. 909 East Emerson. Morton. 1L61550. 
(309) 266-7032 

FOR SALE: MS-DOS/CP/M-86 S-100 system. 12 slots. 
8088/8087/8089 CPUs. 128K CMOS RAM. 64K low- 
power RAM (all static), battery-backed-up clock, two 
serial and two parallel ports. lade bus probe, kludge 
card, two 8-inch DS/DD drives, one 5^-inch SS/DD 
drive. ADM-2A CRT $2450. Flexible, must sell. Dan 
Pritchard. 4721 Bali Court. Albuquerque. NM 87111. 

WANTED: Other Olivetti M20 owners to share ideas 
and information. Kurt Moeller. POB 193. Chico. CA 
95927. (916) 893-0887. 

FOR SALE: Tl 59 programmable calculator with 
PC-100C thermal printer, includes over a dozen 
magnetic cards and two rolls of printer paper: $100. 
Ed Cundy. Lyme Rd.. Hanover. NH 03755. (603) 
643-5004 evenings. 

NEEDED: Correspondent who has knowledge of the 
KORG SAS-20 music keyboard s operating system. 
Looking for help in interfacing with computer and 
programming new ROM packs. Bill Tbmlinson. 1038 
West Mill St.. Kewanee. IL 61443. 

NEEDED: Victor 9000 owner wants to exchange ideas 
with other Victor users. Philippe Ciraud-Lanoue. 18 
Bd de Perpigna. 17200 Royan. France. 

WANTED: Back issues of BYTE. June through 
September 1982 and August 1983 through May 
1984. Will pay $15 and postage. W. Michael Yearick. 
305 July Lane #285. Copperas Cove. TX 76522. 

WANTED: CompuPro system. Other multiuser sys¬ 
tems considered. Alan Bom. POB 272. Tiburon. CA 
94920. (415) 924-6352. 

FOR SALE: TRS-80 Model I. like-new condition. 5W- 
and 8-inch disks, parallel and RS-232C ports. Pass¬ 
port 300/1200-bps auto-answer auto-dial modem, 
brand new: $325. Anadex 9501 graphics printer: 
$800. loe Ruby. 6641 Northwest 22 Court. Margate. 
FL 33063. (305) 972-6641. 

WANTED: Eagle PC II user wants to join/form sup¬ 
port group to share information, advice. Prefer NYC 
area, but eager to correspond with Eagle users any¬ 
where. M. C. Scarino. 55B Brighton #10 Court. 


Unclassified Ads must be noncommercial, from readers 
who have computer equipment to buy. sell, or trade on 
a onetime basis. All requests for donated computer equip¬ 
ment must be from nonprofit organizations. Programs to 
be exchanged must be written by the individual or be in 
the public domain. Ads must be typed double-spaced, con¬ 
tain 50 words or less, and include full name and address. 
Tftis is a free service ; ads are printed as space permits. 
BYTE reserves the right to reject any unclassified ad that 
does not meet these criteria. When you submit your ad 
(BYTE. Unclassified Ads. POB 372. Hancock. NH 
03449). please allow at least four months for it to appear. 


Brooklyn. NY 11235. (718) 646-6988. 

FOR SALE: Heath H-89 Z80 computer with 64 K mem¬ 
ory. Z-37 double-density floppy-disk controller with 
two SS/DD disk drives, full documentation. Excellent 
condition. $1450. Mike Ulis. 337 Cody Rd.. San 
Dimas. CA 91773. (714) 592-3133 after 5 p.m. 

WANTED: Schematics, service manuals, or other in¬ 
formation on the GCE Vectrex video-game unit and 
the prototype Vectrex computer add-on unit. Want 
to contact anyone interested in interfacing the Vec¬ 
trex to other computer hardware. Dennis Lo. 1862 
East Broadway. Vancouver. BC V5T 1Y1. Canada. 

NEEDED: Information on TI 99/4A. circuit diagrams, 
and hardware. Roy Antaw, 47 Park Ave.. Ashfield. 
New South Wales 2131, Australia. 

FOR SALE: Columbia MPC, 384K. two disks, color- 
graphics board, monochrome monitor. Gemini-1 OX 
printer. 1200-bps modem, and more. Will telephone 
support first month: $3500 for everything. Richard 
Platkin. 222 3rd St.. Ttoy. NY 12180. (518) 271-7449. 

FOR SALE: S-100 static memory boards. CompuPro: 
two RAM IV (16K) and one RAM lla (8K). All 4 MHz. 
used but in excellent working condition: $100 for 
16K and $75 for 8K or offer. Also. Industrial Micro¬ 
systems: two 8K at 2 MHz (use 2102s): $50 each or 
offer. Arnold Cohen. 41-34 52nd St.. Apt. 3L. Wood- 
side. NY 11377. (212) 446-0399 

FOR SALE: Centronics printer Model 779. parallel in¬ 
terface. friction feed: $500. Anderson-Jacobson IBM 
Selectric keyboard/printer terminal, serial interface 
(to 1200 bps): $600. Both work well. Manuals in¬ 
cluded: prices negotiable. Jeffrey Katz. 160 West 
87th St.. New York. NY 10024. (212) 873-6717. 

FOR SALE: Level II ROM set with instructions: $100. 
Disk-drive upgrade for Model III or 4, less drives: 
$225. Frank Weatherford. Route 12. Hidaway Hill 
#36. Gray. TN 37615. 

FOR SALE: Ohio Scientific timesharing system with 
104K. 80-megabyte hard disk, two 8-inch floppy-disk 
drives: $8000. Also, extra boards to reconfigure sys¬ 
tem to support extra users/peripherals. Dana 
Humfleet. 665 East Dublin-Granville #300. Colum¬ 
bus. OH 43229. (614) 436-9510. 

FOR SALE: HP 85 with 7470 plotter. HPIB interface. 
RS-232C serial port and ROM drawer. 16K expan¬ 
sion module. All manuals included: best offer. Dave 
Fiske. 8139 Van Noord. North Hollywood. CA 91605. 
(818) 848-4429 days. (818) 989-2070 evenings. 

FOR SALE: Zenith Z-90 computer with 64 K. Z-37 disk 
drive, warranty: make offer. Scott Kudika. 237 Main 
St.. New Kensington. PA 15068. (412) 282-4756. 

WANTED: Schematic diagram for Digital Equipment 
Corp. LA-30P DECwriter. Elwood Jackson. 34 Have¬ 
lock Dr.. Rochester. NY 14615, (716) 621-3266 or 
682-4308. 

FOR SALE: BYTE. September 1975 through July 1984. 
Complete set except July and September 1983 
issues. Best offer over $300 plus shipping. Thomas 
Aulicino. 2014 59th St.. Brooklyn. NY 11204. 

WANTED: Manuals or hardware helpful in interfac¬ 
ing an old Kennedy 3110 nine-track 800-bpi. 25-ips 
bare Magtape deck to an HI 1 (Q-bus) or DEC PDP-11 
Unibus system. A. DuRea. 101 Indian Lane. Oak 
Ridge. TN 37830. (615) 483-0784 

FOR SALE: S-100 computer, motherboard mounted 
inside ADDS Regent 25 terminal. 4-MHz Z80 CPU. 
two serial and three parallel ports 64 K RAM. 8-inch 
and 5tf-inch DD controller. TWo Shugart 8-inch 
SS/DD drives. Used by church camp for three years: 
$2000 or best offer. D. Golowka. 6510 Lindley Ave.. 
Reseda. CA 91335. (818) 705-6631. 

WANTED: Will pay good price for used Apple disk 
drives, memory cards, modems, and other equip¬ 
ment. Would like to trade tips and techniques useful 
on an Apple 11+ or He. Jared Edis. POB 1772. Sum- 
merland. BC V0H 1Z0 Canada. (604) 494-9934. 

FOR SALE: Fortune 32:16 small-business computer, 
console plus two terminals. Expandable to 12 users. 
20-megabyte hard disk. 512K (also expandable), 
new June 1983. moderate use: $15,000. Epson 
MX-100 dot-matrix printer: $500. D. F. S.. POB 9687. 
Colorado Springs. CO 80909. (303) 471-4633. 

FOR SALE: Hazeltine 1500 terminal. 80 by 24 lines, 
upper/lowercase, well-designed keyboard, dust 
cover, excellent condition: $250 or best offer. 
Christopher Pettus. 10920 Palms Blvd. #110. Los 
Angeles. CA 90034. (213) 202-8925. ■ 


FEBRUARY 1985 • BYTE 477 







BOMB 


BYTE's Ongoing Monitor Box 


ARTICLE# 

PAGE 

ARTICLE 

AUTHOR(S) 

COVER STORY WINS 

1 

98 

The HP Integral Personal Computer. 

.Robinson 

The product description prepared by BYTE's 

2 

104 

Ciarcia’s Circuit Cellar 




Build a Serial EPROM Programmer 

. Ciarcia 

Gregg Williams and Ken Sheldon on "The 

3 

120 

The Macintosh Office 

. Markoff. 

Data General/One" is number one in the 




Robinson 

BOMB results for November. Dr. Leo D. 

4 

138 

C to Pascal. 

. Carnevale 

Bores wins $100 for his feature story on the 

5 

147 

Simulate a Servo System. 

. Stauffer 

‘AGAT A Soviet Apple II Computer.'' which 

6 

163 

Introduction to Image Processing 

.Star 

came in second. Jerry Pournelle's ”NCC 

7 

177 

The Birth of a Computer. 

. Nash 

Reflections.'' from Computing at Chaos 

8 

199 

A Low-Cost Data-Acquisition System. 

. Okamura. 

Aghai-Tkbriz 

Manor, placed third. In fourth place is “The 
MC68020 32-bit Microprocessor” by Paul F. 

9 

207 

Fourier Smoothing Without the 

Groepler and James Kennedy. These two 



Fast Fourier Transform . 

. Aubanel. 

authors will split the $50 bonus. And in fifth 




Oldham 

place is Steve Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar speech- 

10 

223 

Paranoia: A Floating-Point Benchmark . . 

. Karpinski 

recognition invention. “The Lis'ner 1000.” 

11 

239 

Modeling Mass-Action Kinetics. 

.Curtis 


12 

251 

Viewing Molecules with the Macintosh . 

. Kirkland 


13 

263 

Laboratory Interfacing. 

. Ford 


14 

269 

Interfacing for Data Acquisition. 

. Clune 


15 

291 

NewWord. 

. Heilborn, 

Reel 


16 

295 

Janus/Ada. 

. Welch 


17 

302 

The Epson Geneva PX-8 . 

. Malloy 


18 

311 

TWo Modula-2 Compilers for the IBM PC 

. Bowyer 


19 

317 

E-Mail for the Masses. 

. Rash 


20 

325 

Mannesmann Tcilly MT 160. 

. Welch 


21 

339 

Computing at Chaos Manor: Troubles. 

. Pournelle 


22 

369 

BYTE Japan: Disks and Printers. 

. Raike 


23 

371 

BYTE West Coast: What Next? . 

. Markoff. 

Robinson. 

Shapiro 


24 

379 

BYTE U.K.: Realizing a Dream 

. Pountain 


25 

387 

Computers and Law: 

Copying Mass-Marketed Software 

. Sterne, 

Saidman 



BYTE ADVERTISING SALES STAFF: 



J. Peter Huestis. Advertising Sales Manager, 70 Main Street, Peterborough, NH 03458, teL (603) 924-9281 

NEW ENGLAND 

SOUTHEAST 

SOUTHWEST. ROCKY MOUNTAIN 

NORTH PACIFIC 

ME. NH. VT. MA, Rl 

NC. SC, GA. FL. AL. TN 

UT. CO. WY. OK. TX. AR. MS. LA 

HI. WA. OR. ID. MT. NORTHERN CA. 

Paul McPherson Jr. (6171 262-1 160 

Maggie M Dorvee (404) 252-0626 

Dennis Riley (214) 458-2400 

NV (except LAS VEGAS). W. CANADA 

McGraw-Hill Publications 

McGraw-Hill Publications 

McGraw-Hill Publications 

David lern (415) 362-4600 

575 Boylston Street 

4170 Ashford-Dunwoody Road- 

Preston wood Tower—Suite 907 

McGraw-Hill Publications 

Boston. MA 02116 

Suite 420 

5151 Beltline 

425 Battery Street 


Atlanta. GA 30319 

Dallas. TX 75240 

San Francisco. CA 94111 

ATLANTIC 

NY. NYC. CT 

MIDWEST 

SOUTH PACIFIC 

Bill McAfee (415) 964-0624 

Dick McGurk (212) 512-3588 

IL. MO. KS. IA. ND. SD. MN. Wl. NB 

SOUTHERN CA. AZ. NM. LAS VEGAS 

McGraw-Hill Publications 

Leah Goldman (212) 512-2096 

Bob Denmead (312) 751-3740 

lack Anderson (714) 557-6292 

1000 Elwell Court-Suite 225 

McGraw-Hill Publications 

McGraw-Hill Publications 

McGraw-Hill Publications 

Palo Alto. CA 94303 

1221 Avenue of the Americas— 

Blair Building 

3001 Red Hill Ave 


39th Floor 

645 North Michigan Ave 

Building #1—Suite 222 

WEST COAST SURPLUS 

New York. NY 10020 

Chicago. IL 60611 

Costa Mesa. CA 92626 

AND RETAIL ACCOUNTS 

Tom Harvey (805) 964-8577 

EAST 

GREAT LAKES. OHIO REGION 

Karen Niles (213) 480-5243. 487-1160 

3463 State Street—Suite 256 

PA (EAST). N| (SOUTH) 

Ml. OH. PA (ALLEGHENY). KY IN. 

McGraw-Hill Publications 

Santa Barbara. CA 93105 

MD. VA. W.VA. DE. D..C. 

EASTERN CANADA 

3333 Wilshire Boulevard #407 


Daniel Ferro (215) 496-3833 

Mike Kisseberth (313) 352-9760 

Los Angeles. CA 90010 

Post Card Mailings 

McGraw-Hill Publications 

McGraw-Hill Publications 


National 

Three Parkway 

4000 Town Center—Suite 770 


Bradley Browne (603) 924-6166 

Philadelphia. PA 19102 

Southfield. Ml 48075 


BYTE Publications 

70 Main Street 

Peterborough. NH 03458 

International Advertising Sales Representatives: 



Mr Hans Csokor 

Mrs. Maria Sarmiento 

Mr Arthur Scheffer 

Seavex Ltd 

Publimedia 

Pedro Teixeira 8 Off. 320 

McGraw-Hill Publishing Co. 

503 Wilson House 

Reisnerstrasse 61 

Iberia Mart 1 

34 Dover St. 

19-27 Wyndham St. 

A-103 7 Vienna. Austria 

Madrid 4. Spain 

London WIX 3RA 

Central. Hong Kong 


45 52 891 

England 01 493 1451 

Tel: 5-260149 

Mrs. Gurit Gepner 

McGraw-Hill Publishing Co. 

Mr. Andrew Karnig 

Mr. Savio Pesavento 

Telex: 60904 SEVEX HX 

PO Box 21 56 

Andrew Karnig & Associates 

McGraw-Hill Publishing Co 

Hiro Morita 

Bat Yam. 59121 Israel 

Finnbodavagen 

Via Flavio Baracchini 1 

McGraw-Hill Publishing Co. 

866 561 321 39 

S-I3I 31 Nacka. Sweden 

20123 Milan. Italy 

Overseas Corp 


46-8-44 0005 

86 90 656 

Room 1 528 

Mr. Fritz Krusebecker 



Kasumigaseki Bldg. 

McGraw-Hill Publishing Co. 

Mr. lean Christian Acis 

Seavex Ltd. 

3-2-5 Kasumigaseki. 

Liebigstrasse 19 

McGraw-Hill Publishing Co. 

400 Orchard Road. #10-01 

Chiyoda-Ku 

D-6000 Frankfurt/Main 1 

17 rue Georges Bizet 

Singapore 0923 

Tokyo 100. lapan 

West Germany 

F 75116 Paris 

Republic of Singapore 

581 9811 

72 01 81 

France 

Tel: 734-9790 



720 33 42 

Telex RS35539 SEAVEX 



478 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 





























READER SERVICE 


Inquiry No. Page No. 


1 1st PLACE SYSTEMS . 226 

2 2500 AD SOFTWARE. 396.397 

3 4-5-6 WORLD. 390 

4 800 SOFTWARE 195 

5 AST RESEARCH 19 

6 AST RESEARCH. 19 

7 AB COMPUTERS 192 

8 ABC DATA PRODUCTS 400 

9 ACL INC.229 

10 ADDMASTER CORP 430 

11 ADV COMP PROD. 429 

12 ADV. COMPUTER SYS. . . 381 

13 ADV DIGITAL CORP 273 

14 ADV DIGITAL CORP . 273 

336 AFTER.275 

337 AFTER 391 

15 ALF PRODUCTS. INC. 144 

16 ALLIED MICRO DEVICES 450 

18 AMBER SYSTEMS 129 

19 AMBER SYSTEMS 172, 173 

21 AMER DESIGN COMPONENTS445 

366 AMPERE INC 186 

22 AMPRO COMPUTERS INC 86 

• APPLE COMPUTER INC Cll. 1 

23 APPLEWARE INC 384 

187 APPLIED SOFTWARE TECH 243 

24 APROPOS TECHNOLOGY 444 

349 ARTISOFT 76 

350 ARTISOFT 76 

25 ASHTONTATE 348. 349 

26 AUSTIN SCIENTIFIC 32 

27 AVOCET . 219 

28 B&B ELECTRONICS. 450 

• B&C MICROSYSTEMS . 447 

344 BASF SYSTEMS 279 

29 BAY TECHNICAL ASSOC 23 

30 BINARY TECHNOLOGY 384 

32 BLAISE COMPUTING INC . 190 

33 BORLAND INTL 20. 21 

34 BORLAND INTL 28. 29 

36 BOTTOM LINE. THE 268 

• BYTE PUBL. INC 392 

• BYTE BACR ISSUES 412 

• BYTE SUBSCRIBER NOTICE 410 

• BYTE SUBSCRIBER SERVICE 350 

37 BYTER COMP SYS. CORP 86 

• C WARE/DESMET C . 266 

• C-SYSTEMS 471 

38 C ITOH DIGITAL PRODUCTS 38 

39 C ITOH DIGITAL PRODUCTS 38 

• CALIF. DIGITAL. 460.461 

• CALIF MICRO COMP 471 

42 CANDELARIA WORRS 450 

43 CAPITAL EQUIPMENT CORP 230 

45 CDR SYSTEMS 322 

• CERMETER MICROELECTRONICS 179 

48 CHIPSOFT INC . 447 

49 CHORUS DATA SYSTEMS 79 

50 CMA MICRO COMP DIV 70 

362 COGITATE. 444 

51 COMP COMPNTS UN LTD 464. 465 

52 COMP COMPNTS UNLTD.466. 467 

54 COMPETITIVE EDGE 84 

56 COMPUDEC 16 

57 COMPUMAIL 470 

58 COMPUPRO 46. 47 

59 COMPUSERVE 376 

60 COMPUTER AFFAIRS INC 314 

61 COMPUTER AFFAIRS INC 405 

62 COMPUTER BRORERAGE SERV 308 

347 COMPUTER CAREERS 353 

63 COMPUTER CHANNEL 417 

• COMPUTER CHRONICLES ... 323 

64 COMPUTER CONNECTION INC.435 

65 COMPUTER DISCOUNT PROD437 

• COMPUTER FRIENDS.231 

66 COMPUTER INNOVATIONS . 347 


Inquiry No. Page No. 


67 

COMPUTER MAIL ORDER260. 261 

68 

COMPUTER PARTS MERCHANT431 

69 

COMPUTER SOURCE. 

400 

• 

COMPUTER WAREHOUSE . . 

189 

70 

COMPUTERBANC. 

60 

71 

COMPUTERS AND MORE . . 

342 

72 

CONROY-LAPOINTE .... 124, 

125 

73 

CONROY-LAPOINTE . . 124. 

125 

74 

CONROY-LAPOINTE 124, 

125 

75 

COSMOS. 

146 

76 

CROMEMCO. 

5 

77 

CUESTA SYSTEMS. 

370 

78 

CUSTOM COMP TECH. 

432 

79 

CUSTOM COMP. TECH. 

433 

80 

CYMA CORPORATION. 

206 

81 

CYMA CORPORATION. 

206 

361 

DAISY DATA TERMINALS CORP447 

82 

DATA EXCHANGE. 

450 

83 

DATA EXCHANGE. 

322 

85 

DATA SPEC. 

94 

86 

DATA SPEC. 

94 

44 

DATA TRANSLATION INC. . 

316 

87 

DATASOUTH COMP CORP 

310 

88 

DECISION RESOURCES. 

135 

360 

DECMATION. 

450 

372 

DIGITAL PRODUCTS INC 

334 

• 

DIGITAL RESEARCH COMP 

67 

89 

DIRECT-CONNECT DEVICES. 

442 

90 

DISCOUNT COMPUTER. 

150 

• 

DISCOUNT COMPUTER CENTERS398 

91 

DISKETTE CONNECTION 

411 

92 

DISKS PLUS. 

447 

93 

DISKWORLD. INC. 

440 

94 

DISPLAY TELECOMMNCTNS 



458. 459 

95 

DOKAY COMP PROD INC 448. 449 

96 

DOW JONES SOFTWARE 

227 

97 

DOW JONES SOFTWARE 

378 

359 

DWIGHT CO.. INC. 

471 

98 

DYSAN CORP. 

61 

345 

EASTMAN KODAK CO . . 12. 13 

346 

EASTMAN KODAK CO 284. 285 

• 

ECONOMY SOFTWARE. 

157 

101 

ECOSOFT. 

30 

102 

EDUCATIONAL MICROCOMP 390 

103 

ELECTRONIC PROTECTION DEV 162 

104 

ELEK-TEK. 

188 

180 

ELEXOR . 

444 

• 

ELLIS COMPUTING INC. 

93 

• 

EMPIRICAL RESEARCH GROUP 158 

105 

ENCHANTED FOREST. 

442 

107 

EPSON AMERICA. 

277 

108 

ERICSSON COMPUTER C0 62, 63 

109 

EXPOTEK . 

254 

110 

EXPRESS BUSINESS SOFTWARE 18 

111 

FALCON SAFETY PROD 

134 

369 

FORTRON. INC. 

438 

370 

FORTRON. INC. 

438 

113 

FOX & GELLER INC. 

152 

114 

FOX SOFTWARE INC. 

384 

115 

FRIENDLY COMPUTER. 

78 

116 

FUIITSU AMERICA. 

184 

117 

FUJITSU AMERICA. 

185 

120 

GENERAL TECHNOLOGY 

77 

121 

GIFFORD COMP SYS/ZITEL CORP2I5 

122 

GILTRONIX. INC. 

322 


Inquiry No. Page No. 


123 GOLD HILL COMPUTER 119 

124 GOLDEN BOW SYSTEMS 471 

125 GREAT SALT LARE COMP456. 457 

• GRYPHON MICRO PROD 94 

126 GTER INC. 91 

127 H&E COMPUTRONICS 87 

128 HADAX ELECTRONICS 430 

371 HALLOCR SYSTEMS.232 

130 HANZON DATA INC. 70 

131 HARMONY VIDEO & COMP 78 

132 HARMONY VIDEO & COMP. 411 

133 HAYES MICROCOMP PROD. 290 

134 HEATH COMPANY.187 

135 HERCULES COMPUTER TECH. 25 

136 HERMES PRECISA INTL. . 213 

138 HOFFMAN INTL. 382 

139 HOUSTON INSTR/BAUSCH&LOMB283 

140 HUMAN DESIGNED SYSTEMS288 

• HYPERON SOFTWARE 354 

143 IBM CORP .136. 137 

339 IBM - (ISG) SERVICES 401 

145 INFOCOM.56. 57 

146 INNOVATIVE SOFTWARE406. 407 

147 INOVION CORP 24 

148 INPUT/OUTPUT TECHNOLOGY. 55 

149 INTEGRAND 413 

150 INTELLIGENT DATA SYS INC 45 

151 INTERACTIVE STRUCTURES 54 

152 INTERACTIVE STRUCTURES 68 

153 INTERACTIVE STRUCTURES 90 

154 INTERFACE TECH CORP 414, 415 


156 IOMEGA.373 

157 IOMEGA. 375 

158 IOMEGA. 377 

159 IADE COMP PROD.451 

160 IADE COMP PROD 452. 453 


161 IAMECO ELECTRONICS. 220, 221 

162 IDR MICRODEVICES INC 472. 473 

163 IDR MICRODEVICES INC 474. 475 

164 IDR MICRODEVICES INC 476 


165 JIM-PAK 196, 197 

166 JUKI INDUSTRY OF AMERICA 299 

335 KADAK PRODUCTS 74 

168 KEITHLEY/DAS. 329 

169 KENSINGTON MICROWARE 58 

170 KEYWORD OFFICE TECH 149 

171 KIMTRON. 145 

172 KRUEGER TECHNOLOGY 446 

173 LABORATORY MICROSYS 30 

174 LANGLEY-ST.CLAIR . . 244 

175 LARK SOFTWARE . 404 

176 LATTICE. INC 333 

177 LAWSON LABS 400 

178 LEADING EDGE PROD 49 

179 LEVEL 5 RESEARCH 322 

181 LIFEBOAT ASSOC 300. 301 

182 LINDE TECHNOLOGY INC 193 

183 LINTEK INC 471 

184 LIONHEART PRESS 430 

185 LOGICAL DEVICES 346 

186 LOGICAL DEVICES 447 

188 LOMAS DATA PRODUCTS 267 

190 LYBEN COMP SYS . 382 

191 LYCO COMPUTER . 222 

192 MACMILLAN SOFTWARE248. 249 

193 MAGNUM PC. 280 


Inquiry No. Page No. 


368 MANAGEMENT INFO. SOURCE262 


194 MANX SOFTWARE SYS. . 52 

195 MANX SOFTWARE SYS 53 

196 MARIACHI OY. 127 

197 MARK WILLIAMS CO. 75 

198 MARVEL SOFTWARE . 282 

199 MARYMAC INDUSTRIES.442 

200 MASTERBYTE COMP OF N.Y . 92 

201 MAXELL DATA PRODUCTS 7 

202 MAYNARD ELECTRONICS . 15 

358 MEGATEL.66 

203 MERRITT COMP. PRODUCTS 471 

204 MET-CHEM INTL CORP . 322 

205 META SYSTEM INC.471 

206 MF| ENTERPRISES INC. 258 

207 MICRO AGE COMP STORES INC 141 

208 MICRO DATA BASE SYS. 181 

209 MICRO DATA BASE SYS. 356. 357 

210 MICRO DESIGN INTL 309 

211 MICRO MART INC.72.73 

212 MICRO PRODUCTS. INC . . 434 

355 MICROCOMPUTER ACCESSOR IES31 

356 MICROCOMPUTER ACCESSORIES3I 

• MICROMINT INC . . 408 

215 MICROPROCESSORS UN LTD 444 

216 MICROSHOP. 432 

217 MICROSIM CORP 26 

218 MICROSIM CORP 26 

• MICROSOFT CORP 167 

• MICROSOFT CORP.169 

• MICROSOFT CORP.171 

• MICROSOFT CORP 315 

219 MICROSTUF. INC . 363 

309 MICRO-TERM INC . 84 

220 MICROTIME 4 

221 MICROWAY 238 

40 MICTRO 66 

222 MIDWEST MICRO-PERIPHERALS 180 

• MINORITY INDUSTRIES.50 

223 MODTECH INTERNATIONAL 241 

224 MODULA SYS. CORP 69 

225 MOORE BUSINESS CENTERS 76 

226 MTI SYSTEMS CORP.186 

227 MULTI-TECH SYSTEMS . 224 

367 MYTECH. 410 

228 N.B.S.92 

229 NATL. PUBLIC DOMAIN SFTW.450 

342 NATIONAL INSTRUMENTS. 34 

55 NCDA.471 

230 NCR 35 

343 NEC HOME ELECTR. USA . 265 

232 NEC INFORMATION SYS. CHI 

233 NEW GENERATION SYS. 368 

234 NORTH HILLS CORP.442 

235 NORTH HILLS CORP 354 

• NRI SCHOOLS ELECTR DIV 385 

236 OPEN SYSTEMS/UCCEL . 351 

237 OPTO-22 336 

238 OPTO-22 . 336 

239 ORCHID TECHNOLOGY.271 

240 ORION INSTRUMENTS 218 

241 ORYX SYSTEMS 418, 419 

242 ORYX SYSTEMS 418. 419 

243 ORYX SYSTEMS 418. 419 

244 PACIFIC EXCHANGES 

442. 444 447 450. 

245 PARAGON COURSEWARE 444 

246 PC NETWORK 204. 205 

247 PC PIPELINE. 450 

248 PC S LIMITED 439 

249 PERSOFT INC. 151 

250 PIPELINE COMPUTER. 469 

252 POCKET TECHNOLOGY . 247 

254 POLAROID CORP 88. 89 

255 PRINCETON GRAPHIC SYS 36. 37 

334 PRIORITY ONE. 443 

256 PROGRAMMERS SHOP . 341 


TO GET FURTHER information on the products advertised in BYTE, either 
pick up your touch-tone telephone and use AIMS or fill out the reader 
service card. Either way full instructions are provided following this reader 
service index which is provided as an additional service by the publisher, 
who assumes no liability for errors or omissions. ‘Correspond directly 
with company. 


FEBRUARY 1985 ‘BYTE 479 















































































































































READER SERVICE 


Inquiry No. Page No. 


257 

PROGRAMMERS SHOP 


345 

258 

PROGRESSIVE MICRO DISTR 




462 

463 

259 

PURPLE COMPUTING . 


354 

260 

Q4 INSTRUMENTS INC 


388 

261 

QIC RESEARCH. 


255 

262 

QUALITY PRINTERS 


430 

263 

QUANT SYSTEMS. 


442 

264 

QUARK INCORPORATED 


17 

265 

QUBIE DISTRIBUTING 


209 

266 

QUBIE DISTRIBUTING . 


335 

• 

RACALVADIC. 

364 

365 

268 

RADIO SHACK. 


CIV 

269 

RELAX TECHNOLOGY 


235 

363 

ROSE ELEC. 


444 

351 

R R. BOWKER. 


343 

271 

S-100 DIV 696 CORP 


441 

272 

S-100 DIV 696 CORP 


441 

273 

SAFEWARE. 


442 

274 

SATELLITE SOFTWARE 


374 

275 

SAV-ON COMPUTERS 

454 

455 

• 

SCOTTSDALE SYSTEMS 


64 

276 

SECURITY MICROSYSTEMS 

405 

277 

SEEQUA COMP CORP 


8 

278 

SEMIDISK SYSTEMS 


217 

280 

SHEPHERD MARKETING 

430 


Inquiry No. Page No. 


* SILICON SPECIALTIES 403 

• SILVER FOX 202 

281 SL WABER 324 

282 SLICER COMPUTERS . 395 

283 SOFTLINE CORP 82 

284 SOFTSTYLE INC 131 

285 SOFTWARE EXCHANGE. 444 

287 SOFTWARE LINK THE 143 

288 SOFTWARE SERVICES 430 

289 SOFTWARE SERVICES 405 

290 SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS INC 281 

291 SOLUTION WARE CORP . 447 

292 SOURCE TELECOMP CORP 245 

293 SP COMPUTERS 74 

294 SPEAR SECURITIES 133 

295 SPECTRUM SOFTWARE . 211 

354 SPERRY COMPUTER SYS 154, 155 

296 SPRUCE TECHNOLOGY CORP276 

297 STANDARD MICROSYS CORP 95 

298 STARBUCK DATA CO . 447 

357 STARSHINE 370 

299 STRIDE MICRO 321 

300 SUMMIT SOFTWARE TECHN INC246 

301 SUNNY INTL. 428 

302 SUNTRONICS CO. INC 428 

303 SUPER COMPUTER INC 176 


Inquiry No. Page No. 


304 

SUPERSOFT. 

330 

305 

SYNALTA SYSTEMS. 

450 

• 

SYSGEN INC. 

338 

306 

SYSTEMS MANAGMNT ASSOC 383 

307 

TALUGRASS TECH. 80. 81 

364 

TATUM LABS. 

444 

• 

TEKTRONIX INC. 

159 

310 

TELETEK ENTERPRISES. INC 

41 

• 

TELEVIDEO SYSTEMS 

191 

• 

TEXAS INSTRUMENTS. 

II 

311 

TEXAS INSTRUMENTS. 

386 

106 

TIGERTRONICS. 

442 

• 

TINNEY ROBERT GRAPHICS. 

436 

312 

TOPAZ INC. 

358 

313 

TOPAZ INC. 

358 

314 

TOSHIBA AMERICA INC. 

71 

315 

TRANSTECTOR SYSTEMS INC 250 

317 

UNIFIED SOFTWARE SYS. . . 

390 

318 

UNISOURCE. 

43 

319 

UNLIMITED PERIPHERALS . 

471 

320 

UNLIMITED PROCESSING INC 203 

321 

VAULT CORP . 

233 

322 

VEN-TEL INC. 

257 

323 

VICTORY ENT TECHNOLOGY 

85 

353 

VIASYNCOMPUPRO. 

366 

324 

VIDEX. 

27 


Inquiry No. Page No. 


325 VISUAL TECH. INC 160. 161 

• VLM COMPUTER ELECTR 447 

327 WADSWORTH PROF SFTW 361 

328 WALLING COMPANY . 442 

• WAREHOUSE DATA PRODUCTS 182 

329 WESTERN VIDEO 132 

330 WESTREX OEM PRODUCTS 225 

331 WINTER CORP 234 

332 WINTER CORP . . 382 

365 XEROX 236, 237 

352 Z-SOFT 51 

348 ZSTEM COMMUNICATIONS DIV 322 

• Correspond directly with company 


INTERNATIONAL ADVERTISING SECTION 

500 AMERICAN BUYING & EXPORT32C 


* BYTE 32B 

501 CASIO COMPUTER CO 32D 


502 HIGH TECH ELECTRONICS 32A 
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10. 

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480 BYTE • FEBRUARY 1985 















































NO OTHER LETTER-QUALITY 
PRINTER CAN TOUCH OUR 
NEW SPIN WRITER FOR SPEED 





CHANGE FORMS LENGTH 
AT THE PRESS OF A BUTTON 

years without a failure is not unusual. 
No wonder there are more Spin writer 
printers hooked up to IBM PC’s than 
any other letter-quality printer. 

How to get up to speed. 

For more information 
on the Spinwriter 8850 
or our two companion 




THE 8850 PLUGS RIGHT 
INTO THE IBM PC 


Spinwriter is a registered trademark of NEC Corp. IBM is a registered 
trademark of International Business Machines Corp. 


Inquiry 232 


models, just call NEC Inform- 
tion Systems at: 1-800- 
343-4419; in Massachu¬ 
setts call (617)264-8635. 
Also available at: 
Entre, 1-800-HI 
ENTRE: Sears 
Business Sys¬ 
tem Cen¬ 
ters, 1- 
800-228- 
2200; 
and 

Comput- 
erland 
stores, (In 
California) 
1-800-321- 
1101; (Out¬ 
side Califor¬ 
nia) 1-800- 
423-3008. 
Find out why 
more and more 
IBM PC users 
are saying, 

NEC and me.” 


V 

'**r*SBB 


NEC 


NEC Information 
Systems, Inc. 
1414 Mass. Ave. 

. Dept. 1610 
i Boxborough, 

K 01719 


THE 8850 
JOINS THE 
HIGHLY-RELIABLE 
SPINWRITER LINE 


one at the touch 
of a button. It also 
has a unique control panel. 
With large, legible alphanumeric 
LED’s to indicate the specific oper¬ 
ating status. 
And make it 
simple for 
even an un¬ 
familiar oper¬ 
ator to use. 

And, of 
course, the 
8850 has all 
the features, 
quality and 
reliability that 
make a Spinwriter a Spinwriter. 

The first choice of IBM PC 


UNIQUE LED DISPLAY TELLS 
USER EVERYTHING FROM THE 
FACT THAT PAPER IS OUT 


TO THE FACT THE 
COVER IS OPEN 


users. 

The Spinwriter printer was the first 
totally plug compatible letter-quality 


Spinwriter 
printers also 
give you capa¬ 
bilities you won’t 
find on other prin¬ 
ters. Like a selection 
of 80 different print 
styles. 

And, nine easily 
installed forms han¬ 
dling options that 
can accelerate your 
printed output even 
more. Spinwriter 
printers also have 
an enviable record 
for reliability. 

In fact, several 


c c 
o o 


Introducing the 
Spinwriter 8850. 

Our newest, and fastest, Spinwriter® 
printer operates at over 550 words- 
per-minute. And is extraordinarily 
easy to operate. 

For one thing the Spinwriter 8850 
takes care of basic settings such as 
pitch and forms length automatically. 
Of course you can also change either 


printer available for 
the IBM® PC. It’s 
still one of the few 
that works with all 
IBM PC software, 
as well as all other 
popular packages. 
You’ll notice 
even its 
looks are 
com¬ 
patible. 















B* 

TANDY 

1000 


TANDY... 

Clearly Superior" 


Engineered for Excellence 

We’ve introduced the latest in technol¬ 
ogy for over 60 years. The Tandy 1000 
and 2000 represent the state of the art 
in performance, quality and price. 


•Plus applicable use/sales tax. Tandy 2000,1200 HD and 1000 prices do not include monitor 
and apply at Radio Shack Computer Centers and participating stores and dealers. IBM/ 
registered TM International Business Machines Corp. 


It’s evident when you can cover the 
MS-DOS market with a line of computers 
unmatched in performance and value. 


does—but costs at least $1400 
less? The new ten-megabyte 
Tandy 1200 HD is compatible 
with virtually all XT software 
and hardware . . . yet it’s 
priced at only $2999. 

Our new Tandy 1000 comes 
complete with software. We 
call it DeskMate™, and it’s six 
programs on one disk. 

The Tandy 1000 has many 
features that cost extra on the 
IBM PC. Like adapters to use a 
monitor, printer, joysticks 


and light pen, plus a Disk Op¬ 
erating System and BASIC— 
all for only $1199. 

For the best in technology^ 
support, service and value, 
stop by your local Radio 
Shack Computer Center. We 
invite comparison! 

Available at over 1200 
Radio Shack Computer Centers and at ,< 
participating Radio Shack stores and dealers 

Radio /hack 

COMPUTER CENTERS 

A DIVISION OF TANDY CORPORATION 
Inquiry 268 


Tandyybrings you not one, 
but three solutions to the per¬ 
sonal computer dilemma. 

Like the IBM PC-AT, the 
Tandy 2000 performs up to 
three times faster than the 
IBM PC. Disk storage is dou¬ 
ble the PC’s. Our color graph¬ 
ics offer twice the resolution, 
twice the colors. The Tandy 
2000 personal computer 
starts at just $2499. 

Or how about a system that 
does everything an IBM PC XT 


TANDY 

2000